New Snake!

Today I decided to try a new location other than my usual trip to Banner and it paid off! I found a spot where some debris had been dumped near a bike trail, so I decided to do some flipping. What I found was four Ring Neck Snakes. These guys were really cool. I haven't caught a Ringneck in Iowa yet (I had caught Ringnecks down in Florida as a boy though) so this was pretty cool. Here's the shots of the snakes...


Here's the worst holding container on planet earth (a lemonade glass!) but it's all I had. They were very cool-looking little creatures.

Here's the underside view of the four ringnecks. They were all very wiry and worked up. I wanted to try to get a few good shots. Most of them blurred up on me. But this wasn't too bad. You can see the color patter on their bellies ranging from a banana yellow to an almost apple red.

This one was beautiful. He had recently shed. Two of them were in opaque phase and their eyes had greyed over which means they are going to shed soon. But this guy was alert and stayed still long enough for me to get a good shot of him.

All in all, ring neck snakes are very cool. They also don't get much bigger than what you see here...maybe eight inches in length.

Banner Again

I went out to Banner for a stroll and some snake hunting and had a good time. I came across a few interesting things. Here are the pictures...


Here is a Northern Water Snake swimming across this small pond. As I got to take a shot or two of this one, you will see in the picture below that there was another one close by to me.


This is the other Northern Water Snake that was swimming in the same pond.


Around from that pond I caught this beautiful Blue Racer. From Florida, where I'm from, we had Black Racers that look a lot like this but were black and not bluish-gray.
Another interesting distinguishment between the racers of Iowa and the racers of Florida is the disposition of the snakes. Floridian Black Racers are very aggressive and have a very bitey nature (not unlike the water snake). But the racers in Iowa (at least the ones I have come across) are skittish creatures and they will ball up hiding their heads, not having too much tendency to bite.

I left this gentle Blue Racer right next to where I caught him. He stayed coiled up on the top of the rock (hiding his head). When I walked back by this spot about 15 minutes later, he was gone.

This was a sad discovery next to the road...a Fox Snake that had been run over by a car. The sad fact is many drivers will intentionally swerve to run over a snake like this. This was a pretty snake...too bad he didn't make it through this spring.

A Couple More Little Finds

Yesterday had a little trip over to Banner and found a couple of interesting things I thought I'd share.

Here is a little Small Mouth Salamander I found under a log. I did quite a bit of flipping but I only found this one salamander.


If you look carefully, you will see the little Easter Garter Snake I came across.


Here's a better shot of him on the bike path. He was a little wound up so I didn't bother him too much.

Check Out Our Latest Video