5-21-05

The other day when Austin and I caught the four milk snakes in the rock pile near our house, we were pressed for time and were going to be unable to spend the time we wanted on photographs. We decided since we were so close to home, we would bring the snakes home, and photograph them on Saturday morning and then release them back to the rock pile once we were finished. I also wanted to experiment with some different settings on my camera and thought I could do that easier in my backyard.

This morning we went back to release the snakes, and, though the weather was a bit cool, we decided to check the rocks before we released the snakes.

We weren't there for more than a few minutes when Austin found another adult milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum) under a rock a few feet from where the two adults had been found a couple of days previous.

This one was about two feet long and was nicely colored, but still showed the darker colors of the eastern species. We photographed it and released it. We turned the rest of the rocks and found nothing and released the four snakes from the other day.

We drove around some, and checked a nearby quarry that we used to herp many years ago, but then they reopened a few years back. There are some areas that they have not been working that looked promising, but no snakes were present. We didn't see anything else that morning.