Fox Snake!

Went out to Banner on this beautiful evening (which was supposed to be the end of the world as we know it) to look for some snakes. It is getting pretty heavy in poison ivy now. But I have this one spot I always check, an old piece of carpet along the bike trail that has yielded a number of snakes over the years. This year it has only yielded a little Northern Water Snake and today's juvenile Fox Snake. He was a fiesty little fellow but he managed to let me get a few good shots in. Here they are...

This is the carpet I was telling you about. I always check this thing...most of the time there's nothing there, but you just never know! Today was a prime example of that.

Recent Herping Trips

Here is a video from one of our most recent herping excursions...

Here are some pictures from that same trip:

My most recent herping trip was today (May 14, 2009). I had a little success. No video but here are the best pictures I shot:

Field Shots near Brown's Woods State Park

Me and my son went to a place just outside of Brown's Woods Park. Actually it was a soccer field that had been recently flooded from all of our recent flooding. We had been told about a story that appeared in the paper where people were cleaning up flood debris out of this soccer field and it was littered with snakes. So we thought we should go and check this out.



We walked the outskirts of the field and only encountered a whole lot of frogs. Here's a couple of smaller American Toads we found along that walk.



From there we encountered this very fiesty Brown Snake when we flipped a trash can over.



Near the entrance of the soccer field we saw a couple of pieces of plywood in the grass. When we flipped them, we found this beautiful Fox Snake. He was around 24 inches long and had quite a fiesty spirit at first, but after a while, like most fox snakes, he calmed right down and was handled rather easily and freely.



Under the same plywood was several Eastern Garter Snakes. This one was real skittish and kept trying to hide his head under his body (something I haven't seen so much in garter snakes, but more so in racers).



All in all, we had a real good trip looking for snakes, it was just incredible hot outside. Now is a very good time of year to do "flipping" for snakes because of their tendency to lay low during the summer heat. Most snakes are more active at night during this time of year in Iowa because of the heat.

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.