5-18-14

Trip Details

Location: Southeastern Iowa

Weather: 64-70 degrees, sunny and windy.

Time: Afternoon

Herpers: Jim Scharosch

Account by: Jim Scharosch

Photos by: Jim Scharosch

I have been wanting to go to a site in southeastern Iowa for the last few years that has a known timber rattlesnake den. Every year I end up doing other things and not making it down there. This year I made up my mind I would finally knock it out.

I made a stop at a tin site along the way and found a Smooth Green Snake (Opheodrys vernalis).

It was an adult about sixteen inches long. I don't see these all that often, so every one I see is a treat.

That was it at this site, so I moved to the timber den. After about twenty minutes of looking around I saw a familiar coil that I knew was a Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus).

It was about three feet long. I really liked the pattern, as it was very different from the snakes we typically see in northeast Iowa. It looked more like some of the timbers we see in Kansas.

I searched for another fifteen minutes or so, then manage to spot a last year's baby timber in the grass between two rocks.

It was tucked in there pretty well, I think it was a pretty good spot to pick out the tiny little guy. It was no more than twelve or so inches long.

That's all I saw, but it was a great day. I finally knocked out a site that I have been wanting to visit for a long time, I saw a really cool adult timber and the other two were icing on the cake.