Date:         Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:18:50 -0400
Reply-To:     Amy Barbe <amy.barbe@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Georgia Birders Online <GABO-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Amy Barbe <amy.barbe@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Unusual Predator
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Very usual around my house, too.  Having lost blubird nestlings to the black
rat snake on more than one occasion I have had to employ numerous and
sometimes unsightly baffles to prevent another recurrence.  A few years ago
on a beautiful Mother's Day, I was relaxing on my back porch with a good
book from one of my kids and heard an awful racket in the yard.  It was
centered around my "duck box" which has hosted owls and tree
rats(squirrels).  Cardinals and carolina wrens and blue jays were all
fussing and as I watched a huge black rat snake slithered out of the
thankfully EMPTY box--which was almost forty feet up the side of an oak
tree.  It made its leisurely way down --straight down-- not winding around
as I thought it might.  With the drought drying up all the streams and small
ponds in our area, we are even seeing red bellied water snakes up at our
house.
Amy Barbe
Athens-Clarke County

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