Water snake glamor: shining in the lights

On a rainy April night Jake and I were out road-hunting in Columbia County, up in northeastern Florida. It had been a warm day but an afternoon rain cooled both the temperature and the road surfaces.

But what the heck - the alternative was to sit at home and write blogs, so we elected to hit the road for a couple of hours. As might be expected under conditions such as these, the most commonly seen snakes were natricines, garter, ribbon, crayfish, and water snakes.

The garters and waters are variably colored and patterned. The former may be reddish with or without stripes or dark with bluish stripes. And the waters (these are Florida banded waters, Nerodia fasciata pictiventris) are even more variable, usually being black with thin or fat crossbands, cinnamon with only obscure banding, or rarely, like this juvenile, bright orange and reddish.

It had just begun to sprinkle again when this little snake chose to cross and beaded with rain droplets, it shown like a beacon in the headlights.

In my opinion, this was the find of the evening - almost!

Many eastern garter snakes from Columbia County are of a reddish hue. A portrait of a very pretty Florida banded water snake.

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.