RAPID CITY JOURNAL (S Dakota) 06 June 05 Birds survive near-miss with snake (Kevin Woster)
Photo: An adult horned lark tries to distract a bull snake away from the nest holding two young birds. The snake was inches away from the nest. Both bird and snake stood their ground before the snake left the area. One of the young birds headed the other direction with the adult, leaving one young bird in the nest. (Don Polovich/Journal staff)
New Underwood: It was one of the life-and-death dramas that play out constantly in nature.
In the world of predators and prey, the script usually concludes in death.
It didn't turn out that way, however, in the encounter between a bull snake and a family of horned larks in the grass near Curlew Lake.
Photographer Don Polovich captured the show during a visit to Curlew — a productive little public fishing lake about 10 miles northeast of New Underwood — while on other photo business for the Journal.
This was no lark for the birds or the snake. It was serious business. And the bull snake initially seemed deadly serious about making a meal of the two young larks and their mother.
Polovich joined the drama when he stepped out of his pickup truck and noticed a ruckus in the grass.
"I was out of the truck and looking at a hawk's nest about a half mile away," he says. "That's when I heard the commotion and saw the horned lark. That's all I saw at first. It was squawking and flapping its wings and running around.
"I thought, ‘Well, this is good. I can get some pictures of that lark.'"
That is when he saw the snake, in the grass only a foot or so from the lark. Then Polovich noticed a baby lark scurrying around in the grass, and another sitting in its nest.
"The snake was tuned in on them. He could have had them all," Polovich said.
Bull snakes are primarily rodent hunters but will take other small creatures, including birds. The snakes squeeze their prey to death, then swallow them whole.
But after a few tense moments, the horned lark scampered off, followed by one of its chicks. The other remained in the nest as the snake slithered away.
"I don't know why," Polovich said of the snake's departure. "But he didn't like the pickup at all."
Polovich's chance arrival on the scene might have saved the birds' lives and cost the snake a meal. But Polovich already had decided that however things went, he would be a spectator in the drama, not a participant. He didn't try to intervene.
"Well, it would be cool to get a picture of the snake with a bird in its mouth," he said. "But it was also nice they got away."
This time, anyway.
Birds survive near-miss with snake