CA striped racer ~ 08/26/14 ~ Pinnacles

California striped racer
Coluber lateralis lateralis

While I don't go out of my way looking for snakes, I get a thrill when I do find them.  This is only my second time knowingly spotting a striped racer; the last time was at Fort Ord over 3 years ago!  True to its name, it quickly skedaddled when I attempted to get a closer picture.  And, yes, my location label below is correct for the east side of Pinnacles.  This was the first time since camping back in 2011 that I've hiked from one side of the park to the other.  I'll admit, I'm a bit of a hiking wimp, especially in the heat on hills.  It was worth the trek.

CA kingsnake ~ 08/05/14 ~ Pinnacles

California kingsnake

Lampropeltis californiae (formerly L. getula)

There is something to a 6th sense, I gotta tell ya.  I spotted a patch of narrow-leaf milkweed about 20 ft. off trail and was excited it was still in bloom.  I wanted to take a closer look for nectaring leps, and as I lifted my leg to go, a voice in my head shouted "Look for snakes!"  Sure enough, in the shadow of my boot was this cryptic CA kingsnake.  Whoa.

Who would have thought that someone out looking for butterflies also has to keep a keen eye out for snakes?  Fortunately, every organized field trip I did this spring came with stern warnings about rattlesnakes and watching where you step.  I try to keep snakes in mind at all times... that is, if I'm not too distracted by some other new find.

While I probably would have done more damaged to this snake than it to me, I'm glad I didn't step on it.  I have to say those stripes do a good job hiding it in the grass.  The only other time I've seen a CA kingsnake was a freshly flattened one on the road out of Pinnacles, and the camouflage made little impression on me then.

This was the only picture I managed to take.  Once it deemed I was interested, it quickly slithered backwards into what looked like a gopher hole.  Given that I had already seen an unusual number of fence lizards, both juveniles and adults, I figured it would be safer for me to stay on trail for the remainder of my hike.  Something about this day made it a good one for finding snakes and lizards out and about.  It could have been my startling heightened awareness, or the sunny temps were just right for sunbathing reptiles?

ps 08/14/14 - We also saw a CA kingsnake at Podere di Farfalla in Monterey Co. on August 7, 2014 not very far from where we saw a juvenile horned lizard.  Maybe baby lizards make great snake snacks?  It's the season, apparently.

CA kingsnake ~ 06/03/14 ~ Pinnacles

California kingsnake

Lampropeltis californiae (formerly L. getula)

Ah, man!  The truck ahead of me ran over this gorgeously large snake on the road out of the Pinnacles west entrance.  I had to stop and check it out, because I don't get to see as many snakes as I would like, especially ones this large.  I'm sure some of my more squeamish readers will be glad to know I picked the PG-rated head shot; the other side was a bit gruesome with more blood and a cracked eye, which I found totally fascinating.  So, this is my first CA kingsnake I've ever seen... I think.  Certainly, I didn't know what it was until I got home and looked it up.

checkered underside of California kingsnake

I nudged it a little bit.  Dead.  So, I gingerly picked up its tail to flip it over.  It was still quite flexible.  Wow!  Look at that amazing belly pattern, like a checkerboard, kinda.  The way the curvy head scales transition to the orderly rectangular belly scales is amazing.  Reminds me of what they did to Mystique in the X-Men movies, eh-hem, to keep her modesty.

very large California kingsnake (over 3 1/2 feet?)

This has got to be an old snake to be so big, right?  I'm sad to see it become bird food.  I pulled it over to the side of the road, because we certainly don't need turkey vulture (or heaven forbid, condor) roadkill, too.  Does that happen?

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has a downloadable .pdf of the CA kingsnake.  To open it up, click here.

valley garter snake ~ 05/27/14 ~ Pinnacles

valley garter snake
Thamnophis sirtalis fitchi

(ssp. of common garter snake)

The very few remaining puddles along the Juniper Canyon Trail creek are tightly confined hot spots for butterflies, bees and wasps, and this smallish valley garter snake!  It seems any small amount of water or moisture is coveted by wildlife this extremely dry year.   The following local nature cam trappers have done a fine job documenting the variety of activity:

Camera Trap Codger: Bath Party

Nature of a Man:  Mono Grotto Lotto

Nature of a Man:  Exclusionary Principles

Nature of a Man:  Exclusionary Principles, Bird Edition

Nature of a Man:  The Daily Deluge
Camera Trapping Campus: Take Me to the Water

Check 'em out!

ps 11/23/14 - And another Nature of a Man:  Hoping for Springs Eternal

northern Pacific rattlesnake ~ 05/17/14 ~ Fort Ord

northern Pacific rattlesnake

Crotalus oreganus oreganus

(ssp. of western rattlesnake)

Rattlesnake or rattle snake?  Ugh.  In any case, you'll notice the max, fuzzy zoom on this baby.  Lyle, the Army Lands munitions safety officer, also served as the snake safety officer and kept all of us a respectable distance away.  This is probably only the third rattlesnake I've ever seen here in CA.  The other two sightings have been tucked in among rocks at Pinnacles at the east entrance to the Balconies Cave and the switchbacks along the Juniper Canyon Trail.  I sometimes forget we have these poisonous snakes, because for me their sighting is rare.  Gary Nafis has created quite a montage of rattlesnake warning signs.  Note the wide head and 3-segmented rattle.  Can you tell how old a rattlesnake is by the number of rattle segments?  This one was small, took up an area probably smaller than a salad plate.

western yellow-bellied racer ~ 05/02/14 ~ Tassajara Road

western yellow-bellied racer

Coluber constrictor mormon

(ssp. North American racer)

Chris stopped the car rather quickly.  Snake!  On the road!  I jumped out with my camera to find it stretched out in long waves.  It still makes me laugh how snakes just lie there on the road, as if their usual hiding spots are too cramped and they just need to stretch themselves out for a bit. Reminds me of how I feel the need to stretch out on a flat bed after a long flight in a cramped airplane.

As soon as I got closer, it coiled up and made the most amazing continuous backwards movements onto itself.  According to Gary's CA Herps (linked in the scientific misnomer above), this Northern American racer is not a constrictor, and it bites aggressively.  I didn't know that at the time, but I'm always a bit cautious around snakes I don't know.  Chris, who stayed with the car should another car come barreling around the corner, shouted for me to get video.  Ha!  As if. I was just hoping I could get at least one non-blurry photo, because so often these opportunities are fleeting.  Little did I know the snake wasn't too keen on moving anywhere.  It held its ground and watched me closely.  I didn't want it to get run over by a car, so I tried herding it to the side of the road with a nudge from my boot and then a stick to pick it up.  That's how I got the yellow belly picture.  It was extremely reluctant, but once it decided to go, it went in a flash.

After I got home and looked at my pictures, I noticed the oozy stuff here and there on its back.  Click second picture above for closeup.  It was my first shot out of the car before I molested it with my picture and herding activities.  What is that shiny stuff?  Did it already get run over?  Was it in some mammal's mouth and dropped?  Is it some kind of defensive secretion?  Is it the result of a twisted mating position?  Hmm...

Ken @ Nature of a Man has an excellent blog post on Coluber mormon.  Some view this snake as its own sp., not a ssp.

ring-necked snake ~ 04/15/14 ~ Pinnacles

Monterey ring-necked snake

Diadophis punctatus vandenburghi

Paul is amazingly gentle when he catches herps.  I've never seen anything like it.  He'll just stop on the trail when he hears something rustling, look over, and then quietly pounce in one fell swoop with flat hands.  It looked like a Tai Chi movement.  He also got a rather large alligator lizard this way and showed us the stripes running down the middle of the belly scales and the light colored eyes.

The coolest thing about this snake is its odor.  No joke.  Right after Paul caught it, his fearless kids, who were downwind, made the funniest eww-gross faces.  As I moved in to take a closer look, I thought to myself, "Dang, someone has some really bad body odor."  Haha, it was the snake!  It smelled exactly like toe jam, or belly button jam.  Take your pick.  Paul said ring-necked and a couple other snakes release scent from their vents when stressed.  Wild.  I almost couldn't stop smelling my fingers after releasing this snake, as if it were my own version of the Flehmen response.  So weird.

I've commented on Nature of a Man and Dipper Ranch about how their area's ssp., the Pacific ring-necked snake (D. punctatus amabilis), looks tiny compared to what I remember of the dead one I found down at Rocky Creek.  I swear the dead one was as thick as my finger, not tiny enough to fit in 2 drinking straws, as Ken cleverly described.  But, lookie here, this is indeed very tiny and supposedly the same ssp. as Rocky Creek.  It could be a young one?  Or maybe I have a tendency to remember things as being larger than they actually were?  My recent discovery of the full-on macro, macro, mwahahaha mode may be messing with my sense of size, too, as is evidenced by this snake's pretty iridescence I uploaded to Flickr.  The ring-necked snake did not like my small point-and-shoot.  Every time I pressed the noiseless button, it would shirk its head away like it could see the blink of the camera eye.  Fascinating.  I really like holding snakes, but I also worry I could inadvertently harm the wild ones.

coast garter snake ~ 03/10/14 ~ Midpen Preserve

coast garter snake
Thamnophis elegans terrestris
(ssp. of western terrestrial garter snake)

I don't know how to sex snakes, but I'm calling it a she.  She was quick and sought refuge in the pond, but a long-legged herp fellow was quicker on his feet.  We thought the two red dots on her head were a nice addition to a very pretty little snake.

edited 04/01/14 - Thanks to Cindy's comment, I revised the ID from Santa Cruz garter snake (Thamnophis atratus atratus) to best guess a ssp. of the western terrestrial garter snake, the coast.  All 3 ssp. of aquatic garter snakes (T. atratus) do not have any red on their sides like this one clearly shows.  Doh! 

The other possibility would be one of the common garter snakes (T. sirtalis).  While Cindy says CA red-sided (T. sirtalis infernalis), I lean towards valley (T. sirtalis fitchi).  Look at this picture and tell me it doesn't look the same with that large eye and black wedges?  Well, okay, the individual shown above has 8 labial palps (typ. of western terrestrial, elegans), rather than only 7 (typ. of common, sirtalis), but that's apparently not 100% diagnostic.  Plus, neither T. sirtalis ssp. is supposed to be found in this area of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and we're confident, somehow, that this is not the endangered San Francisco garter snake (T. sirtalis tetrataenia). Confused, yet?  Join the club!

For a handy-dandy key to CA garter snakes, check out CA Herps.  And, for a brief summary of the confusion around garter snakes (with links) check out my CA red-sided post from Fort Ord.

rubber boa ~ 09/29/13 ~ Rocky Creek

northern rubber boa

Charina bottae

more information

I first saw this snake as I was walking up the road to greet a fellow blogger whom I had invited for a Rocky Creek tour.  I figured it might be the same kind of snake that I saw last year during our now annual excursion.  All I remembered was last year's snake belly was orange, similar to this one.  My blogging visitor jokingly expressed disappointment that I didn't know the name off the top of my head.  Hey, I tend not to remember everything from Nature ID, but at least I can easily track past information. That's kind of the point of this blog.  Of course, when I got home I looked up my blog entry from last year.  Ring-necked snake?  Definitely not. This one has an unusual rubbery appearance to it with lots of bite marks down the length of its body.  Apparently, body scars are common in rubber boas.  During the course of the visit, I passed it 4 times total.  It couldn't have been entirely dead, because it changed positions each time, but it was still on the road.  Neat!  Here's a new-to-me snake that I never knew existed around here.

ring-necked snake ~ 09/29/12 ~ Rocky Creek

Monterey ring-necked snake

Diadophis punctatus vandenburghi (alt. vandenburgii and vandenburghii)

Like with quick birds, I often only photograph snakes after they've died.  This one was difficult to miss, because we found it belly-up with bright orange in the middle of the dirt road.  It was roughly 16 inches long.  Ants had already started meticulously carrying little bits away.  I wish I had more patience to have taken better photographs, I mean it was dead after all and wasn't going anywhere. The color differences between the two photographs above of the dirt and the orange was exactly what my camera picked up; I did not do any color correction in the computer.  I had a challenging time finding information on ring-necked snakes that wasn't overly generalized, especially with the alternate ssp. spellings.  This snake definitely does not have any black speckling typical of the Monterey ssp.  It looks more like the coral-bellied ring-neck snake (Diadophis punctatus pulchellus) found inland in the Sierra Nevadas, but according to some taxonomic notes these subspecies could be lumped together as a coastal CA lineage.

valley garter snake ~ 06/10/11 ~ Pinnacles

valley garter snake
Thamnophis sirtalis fitchi

(ssp. of common garter snake) 

This swimming snake was a fun find. It amazes me they can use a similar serpentine movement to swim as moving across ground. It was good to revisit garter snake ID, because I found an error in a previous post that I had originally identified as a coast garter snake.

ps 04/01/14 - I had briefly changed the ID to Diablo Range garter snake (Thamnophis atratus zaxanthus), an aquatic garter snake.  However, Diablo do not have red on their sides like this one shows.

Pacific gopher snake ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles

Pacific gopher snake
Pituophis catenifer catenifer

This individual was huge. Later this same day as we were getting dinner ready at our campsite, Andy noticed motion in a tree and something take off. At first it looked like a kite (the toy, not the bird) with a long tail that kept circling around in large sweeping motions. As we kept watching, it became clear that it was a very large bird of some sort with a long snake in its talons, about twice as long as the wingspan of the bird. The bird soared around with the dangling snake, hardly flapping its wings at all, for a good 15 minutes or so. We guessed it was an immature golden eagle based on a "Mantenga sus ojos en el cielo" condor pamphlet the park ranger gave us (she was out of the English version). Does anyone know if this is typical behavior? It reminded me of the coat of arms of Mexico that is used on the national flag.

CA striped racer ~ 05/14/11 ~ Fort Ord

California striped racer
Coluber lateralis lateralis

Contrary to its common name, this striped racer was laying quite still in a ditch to the side of the road. While I did get fairly close, maybe too close than I should have, I did zoom and crop for the lovely close-up shot. The yellow stripe consists of 2 half-scales. The federally and state threatened C. lateralis euryxanthus has an additional fully yellow-colored scale in between the 2 half-scales.

Pacific gopher snake ~ 08/04/10 ~ Fort Ord

Pacific gopher snake
Pituophis catenifer catenifer

posted 08/14/11 - This is totally a wild guess as to species. Another possibility could be the California king snake (Lampropeltis getula californiae). However, I can't imagine any other snake as large as the skin and skeleton, both of which were well over 4 feet in length. Would there be any other snake shedding its skin actually in a gopher hole? Plus, on the skeleton, I think I see a characteristic dark line coming straight down from the eye.

Pacific gopher snake ~ 06/09/10 ~ Mt. Madonna

Pacific gopher snake
Pituophis catenifer catenifer

Thanks to Cindy at Dipper Ranch, I feel very confident in identifying gopher snakes now. I look for the dark line that drops straight down below the eye. Gopher snakes sure can get big! This one was easily over 4 ft. long.

Pacific gopher snake ~ 05/06/10 ~ Pinnacles

Pacific gopher snake
Pituophis catenifer catenifer

Why did the snake cross the road? Apparently, to find a mate! Or sometimes seem to just sit there in the middle of the road while an oncoming large object, i.e. a car, comes zooming at it? We saw this snake looking a bit flattened like it had melted slightly and zigzaggy (don't know how else to describe it). I got out of the car and touched its tail end simply to check if it was still alive. Sure enough it firmed up and started moving along. Fascinating!

Okay, considering the last time I touched the tail end of a snake, which may have been a baby rattlesnake, I still need to learn how to recognize local snakes. CA Herps posted what looks like an interpretive sign from SBMNH. I had to laugh because it tells you to look at the eyes and see if the pupils are rounded or vertical. Hello? I'm not sure I want to be close enough to a rattler to look lovingly into its eyes. But, what do I know, I need to stop pulling snake tales (pun intended). For a better interpretive sign, see EBRPD's.

ps - Truth in advertising, the first photo above was "enhanced" with iPhoto. I think I like this iMac.

pss 05/10/10 - Found this awesome local snake post from Dipper Ranch on how to tell the differences between snakes.

CA red-sided garter snake ~ 03/04/10 ~ Fort Ord

California red-sided garter snake
Thamnophis sirtalis infernalis
(ssp. of common garter snake)

Do snakes go stiff after they've died? Because this one was still fairly soft except where there's a big kink, likely from being run over by a mountain bike. We found it on a bridge over a small stream. I'm making a guess as to subspecies.

Yes, this location is Fort Ord, not Carmel Valley Road. We stopped here on our way home from our long drive of looking for wildflowers.

ps 07/16/11 - I originally posted this as a coast garter snake (Thamnophis elegans terrestris) Nope. The red head should have been my clue. I've corrected the ID above.

pss 07/23/11 - I've been in e-mail exchanges with John of WildHerps about garter snake ID. He was kind enough to send me a link to HumboldtHerps and the continuing discussion of intergrades in areas where different garter snake species are known to exist. CA red-sided (T. sirtalis infernalis) may not always have a red head and may be a cross with valley (T. sirtalis fitchi). And, if that wasn't confusing enough, while the snake pictured above is definitely CA red-sided, it could also cross with coast (T. elegans terrestris) which has quite of a bit of red flecks on its side and may sometimes have red on the sides of its head, too. Since both species are found in the area (John has pictures of coast at Asilomar here in PG), I'm making a note for future IDs. I did learn that the number of labial scales may be indicative of species, but, of course, not always.

Pacific gopher snake
Pituophis catenifer catenifer

I grabbed its tail with hopes to get it to move off the trail. There are so many mountain bikers at Fort Ord that I didn't want it to get run over. Much to my surprise, instead of slithering off, I could feel it vibrate like a couple beats of a cell phone's silent mode. Then it crouched as shown above. I'm guessing it was a young rattlesnake! I need to learn a little more about recognizing snakes. It still looks like a gopher snake to me.

ps 05/10/10 - I originally posted this under rattlesnake? Thanks to Cindy's comment below, this is confirmed to be a gopher snake (I corrected the ID above). I'll have to inform my mother-in-law. She was hiking with us that day and my pulling the tail of a baby rattlesnake has been one of her after-dinner stories. See Cindy's Dipper Ranch post for excellent rattlesnake information.