Went herping at a stream today, in Pittsburgh, PA, on the lookout for neonate queen snakes and northern water snakes. The trip started off bad, didn't see anything for half an hour. Flipped rocks, moved tarp, just about everything, no signs of sheds, but alot of prey items everywhere(small minnows/crayfish/salamanders).

It's pretty sad, I came to this area for the first time about 10 years ago, and used to be able to find atleast 30 neonatal snakes, but they recently did some construction on the stream, and I have a feeling that had something to do with the demise of the snakes there.

After about 40 minutes of nothing, a friend of mine spotted a fish, said it looked pretty big. So I looked. It moved through the stream in an area where it was about 4' deep or so. Then I watched it move past something that looked like a snake. Though my eyes are bad so I couldn't really tell. My friend said it looked like a snake, so we moved closer.

Turns out, it was an adult Queen Snake, feasting on a crayfish. I have heard of very few people witnessing this in the field. We waited until it finished it's meal, about 10 minutes or so, all of which underwater. The specimen was collected and will be donated to science.

Neat sight though. Wish I had the camera on me.
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Mike
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
Helmz777@aol.com
www.freewebs.com/mikesnake
Updated 9/6 NEW PICS/INFO

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