6-03-01

Trip Details

Herp Trip: Sunday, June 3 2001

Herpers: Jim Scharosch, Laura Scharosch, Austin Scharosch

Location: Linn County

Time: 2:00 pm

Temp/Conditions: 60 degrees, windy, partly sunny in the afternoon

I took the family and went herping at a local lake. We decided to rent a canoe to look for water snakes. Before we got the canoe we looked around in the rocks near the boat dock. We managed to spot three Northern Banded Water Snakes (Nerodia sipedon) right by the dock. They were all basking on the rocks, a little back from the water, in the areas with some plant cover.

One was a large gravid female, as you can see in the picture below. I didn't try to catch any of them because I didn't want to alert all the fishermen and kids that there were snakes in the area for them to kill.

We took the canoe out on the lake and paddled into the backwater areas. We found about a dozen Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta) basking on logs in the backwater. We didn't find any snakes here though.

On the way back we stopped off at a small rock jettie across from the boat dock. Here I found, and missed, another water snake as it shot into the rocks. The next one I saw, I did manage to catch. It was a female, about three and a half feet long and very chunky. She also appeared to be gravid.

After this we returned our canoe and looked around the docks a little more. We did not see the water snakes again.