Fall time for baby, juvenile animals
By My Courier-Tribune
Just like kids heading back to school, August brings many firsts for animals.
For most people, spring tends to be the time that people see as baby season in the natural world, but August brings lots of little ones as well, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation.
Copperhead snakes are born around mid-August, larval salamanders are transforming into adults and snapping turtle eggs begin hatching.
August is also a time of firsts for mammals born earlier this year. Baby bats take their first flights, young striped skunks and foxes strike out on their own and young fox and gray squirrels are searching for home territories.
“For all the firsts animals may have in their life, the first migration probably stands as the hardest. August is the beginning of migration season for many species,” states a release. “Hummingbirds start migrating.”
The fall warbler and shorebird migrations also begin and continue for the next month.
“With all the birds leaving for the season it is easy to forget that some migrating birds are coming home to Missouri this month. Blue-winged teal breed in northern Missouri and as far north as Alaska and Nova Scotia and those birds who spent summer farther north are coming back through Missouri later this month,” states a release.
