Friends of five creeks—feature of the month

For our feature of the month, we are privileged to include a short excerpt from Bay Area Wildlife: An Irreverent Guide, by Jeff Miller—a local environmental hero.

As the book’s introduction says, Jeff has spent his “entire life falling in love with the natural world of the Bay Area and most of my adult life fighting to protect it” as a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity. Alameda whipsnakes are with us today in large part because in the 1990s, the Center won them federal Endangered Species Act status and partnered with the theologically conservative Christians Caring for Creation to protect 150,000 acres of habitat critical to their survival.

Jeff founded the Alameda Creek Alliance in 1997. More than anyone else, he deserves credit for the fact that after generations, salmon, steelhead, and other anadromous fish like lampreys can again swim upstream to reproduce in our largest local watershed — Alameda Creek drains about half the East Bay.

Growing out of a lifetime’s struggle and joy, Jeff’s book invites and guides us to “stalk the chocolate tarantula, greet the grunion, conduct a stakeout for elusive marsh chickens” without taking wildlife or ourselves too seriously. It also is a reminder that our animal relations “need space to move, groove, and thrive” — spaces we should protect for their sakes and ours.

Illustrated by Obi Kaufmann, “California-centric artist, poet, and eco-philosopher,” as Jeff describes him, and published by our local Heyday Press, Bay Area Wildlife: An Irreverent Guide is available in local bookstores or online here and here.

Enjoy the selection below!

The racy (in more ways than one) Alameda whipsnake

Alameda whipsnakes are snazzy-looking serpents, sporting a sooty-black dorsal color, yellow-orange lateral racing stripes, and a sublime salmon-pink wash on the underside of the tail tip. Endemic to the East Bay, Alameda whipsnakes only occur within eastern Contra Costa and Alameda Counties and are restricted to areas with chaparral and scrub.

Bill Stagnaro, CalPhotos

These rare and imperiled snakes have suffered greatly due to sprawl development, since they slither through the same habitats that developers eye for building trophy homes and golf courses.

Whipsnakes are indeed whip-fast but their preferred quarry, western fence lizards, are also speedy. During the seasons when whipsnakes are active, from spring through early autumn, they engage in a daily solar arms race with the lizards. Both being cold-blooded animals, snakes and lizards alike begin their day by basking in the sun to raise their body temperatures, jump-starting their metabolisms and limbering up their muscles. The thermal advantage goes to whomever can find the perfect sunny spot and warm up to achieve pursuit speed or escape speed first.

For whipsnakes, reproduction occurs during spring, when males cruise the grasslands looking for love. Females turn their winter hibernation sites into romantic boudoirs and wait for a male, or sometimes more than one, to arrive. To spare you the salacious details of intertwining serpent reproduction, suffice to say it involves aligning cloacal openings, wraparound pulsing, and paired external genitals. Paired, as in two sets of genitalia for each snake. Snakes only use one at a time during mating, but it’s always good to have a backup.

Biologists have long known that male snakes have two penises (called hemipenes), with research on male reptile reproductive anatomy dating back to 1674. It wasn’t until 2022 that research was published revealing that female snakes indeed have clitorises (yes, two per female snake). This finding implies that snake mating involves seduction and gratification. Unsurprisingly, it was female herpetologists who confirmed that lady snakes have pleasure centers, since male researchers had been unable to find the clitorises for nearly 350 years….

(From section on Natural History and Ecology)

Whipsnakes on the prowl for prey resemble a skinny cobra, holding their head up high and moving it from side to side, which is thought to improve their depth perception. Whipsnakes trap and restrain their quarry under loops of their body, pinioning (but technically not constricting) their prey until they can swallow their meals whole.

The aforementioned joining of ophidian genitals occurs from March through June. Females are oviparous, meaning they produce eggs that develop and hatch outside of the mother, typically six to eleven eggs per clutch for whipsnakes. Egg-laying is in late spring or early summer, and the female incubates the eggs for about three months before they hatch. The young emerge in the late summer and fall, already about a foot long, and then they are pretty much on their own. Whipsnakes retreat to rock piles or small mammal burrows to shelter and hibernate from November through February.