stop4snakes's Favorites

This subject was found during a spotlighting adventure. Initially, the snake was suspected to be an introduced.
Flower Pot Blind Snake R. braminus due to its small size and dark colouration, however a ranger on the island reviewed the images and video and he remarked that he was sure it was R exocoeti remarking it was still larger than the introduced R.braminus and a paler coloration overall. .

I look forward to further comments and discussion on this individual.

Collected as part of an official research survey for this species. This individual had been initially tagged and stocked into Allegheny Reservoir 5 years prior, and at some point went over the reservoir's dam and swam back up into this nearby tributary of the Allegheny River.

West slope Temblor Range. I have not found any range maps that include the Temblors in the range of Ensatina (?).

https://californiaherps.com/salamanders/pages/e.e.eschscholtzii.html

https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=1439&inline=1

Update: whereas no range maps include the Temblor Range, including the Stebbins, Wake, and others work on ring species, not surprisingly Dr. Sam Sweet has collected an Ensatina from this area, http://portal.vertnet.org/o/ccber/herps?id=urn-catalog-ccber-herps-31720

Around 5pm today in the middle of the road. Large 3ft or more snake. Hisisng, loud, almost like a rattle noise. But no tail rattle. Defensive while I kept distance. Aggressive. Never took its eyes off me. Opened mouth often. No teeth. Black eyes. Black tongue. Large center. Moments prior a large barred owl flew past my windshield and watched me as I approached snake. An epic moment in my day. I was going to pick up my son who was with a native medicine woman.

8:30 AM; air temperature 59 degrees F.Seen in low weeds in cleared area adjacent to dense riparian vegetation. Low wet area with abundant recently metamorphosed Pseudacris hypochondriaca. Fourth individual seen in four years of least Bell's vireo monitoring. Very low population density here.