4-16-15

Trip Details

Location: Linn and Benton Counties, Iowa

Weather: 72 degrees, partly cloudy, no wind

Time: 4:30

Herpers: Jim Scharosch

Account by: Jim Scharosch

Photos by: Jim Scharosch

A quick trip out to my three local spots today. I started with a Linn County spot where I often find baby fox snakes in quantity and after finding nothnig but a few garter snakes, I found my first Fox Snake (Elaphe vulpina) of the season.

A bit later I turned a nearby rock and found three more.

Another rock yielded two more, so with all the baby fox snakes, this spot had held true to form.

This series of pics displays something kinda funny and very common, at least for me. The first fox snake I took some time to try and get decent photos, the second set was a pile on an open spot on the ground and the third set was an in hand shot. The quality of my shots is often inversely proportional to the number of snakes I find.

I moved on to my Benton County spot. I found a bunch of larger garter snakes before I found my first interesting find, a young Racer (Coluber constrictor).

It was a baby from last year, still showing all of the juvenile patterning and was about ten inches long.

This area has been turning up Ribbon Snakes (Thamnophis proximus) and it didn't disappoint today.

This was another juvenile, most likely a baby from last year.

A snake selfie, or a snelfie.

I moved on to another Linn County spot, this one very close to home. I haven't had much luck here the last few seasons. I had strategically placed a few rocks from a nearby quarry here last fall, but nothing turned up under them. Under a small rock on the upper ledge though I found another juvenile fox snake, the seventh for the day if you lost count.

That was it for the day. It seems like the milk snakes aren't up quite yet so these spots will get visited at least once more this spring. We have a cold snap headed our way next week, so it may be a while before I get back.