This week my female Kellet’s whelk (Kelletia kelletii) started laying eggs. She’s been doing this every summer for the past several years. She lives with one other whelk, presumably the father of her brood, as the eggs are both fertilized and viable even though I’ve never seen the snails copulating. That’s right, copulating. Whelks are…
Month: July 2013
Dudes, dudettes, and dudelets
We are fortunate to have a lot of wildlife in our backyard, which is actually a canyon. On any given day we can look out and see finches and hummingbirds squabbling over their respective feeders, jays trying to steal whatever they can, and hawks either swooping through the brush or soaring overhead. The soundtrack of…