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.