Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Central Florida is crawling with reptiles. A friend and I ambled around a once productive wooded area. Only snakes located were one juvenile black racer, one adult black racer(literally crawled across my feet), and a bright blue 42" eastern garter. Once bored with walking, we grabbed a bite to eat and went to do some raod cruising. Road cruising started decently with a fat juvenile cottonmouth. Another three minutes on the raod, and an adult dusky pigmy rattlesnake lay in our tracks. The next hour was slow so we went back to the original road we started on. Within five minutes we had lost count of cottonmouths, Florida water snakes, brown water snakes, and integrades of the two. Finishing the night with a juvenile black swamp snake! Also flooding the roads and filling the stomachs of just about every snake I handled were southern toads, eastern narrowmouth toads and southern leopard frogs. There had been no rain in this area for some time; and they were all grouped around a quickly drying ditch. After returning home and showering from the dusty day it began to rain about 11:30 pm. I'm glad to see spring is back in full swing.

Total count for the day:
Black racer-2
Eastern garter-1
Black swamp snake-1
Florida water snake-TMTC!
Brown water snake-3(that looked IMO to be pure)
Integrades of Florida and Brown water snakes-TMTC!
Dusky pigmy rattlesnake-1
Florida Cottonmouth-TMTC!(mostly juveniles)
Southern toad-TMTC
Eastern narrowmouth toad-TMTC
Southern leopard frog-TMTC
American Alligator-5
Peninsula cooter-TMTC
Florida softshell-2
Common snapping turtle-3
Florida box turtle-1
Gopher tortoise-5
Green anole-TMTC
Five lined skink-4
Broadhead skink-1

I think that about covers an excellent day,
Ian Daviss

;

WOW!!! Yeah, I'd call that an excellent day, all right! Any pics?
-----
Carl

program before I can post pics. I'll put them on a disk and maybe spend the $200 for an editing program, one of these days. Or any suggestions for pic resizing program downloads would be nice!

Thanks,
Ian Daviss

...to FL (spring 05).

-----
Carl

Do you have pics of any of these? They must be great!
What I really want to see are the snakes you're calling intergrades of FL and brown watersnakes.
Contact me via the forum or email
markk15 at msn dot com.
:Mark
-----
Surrender Dorothy!

www.crimsonking.funtigo.com

It sounds like you may be confusing Brown watersnakes (N.taxispilota) and Florida Green watersnakes (N.floridana).
Post some pics, or in the future, an easy way to tell the difference between the two is to look at their bellies. Browns have a heavily patterned venter, while Florida Greens have an unpatterned belly.

Florida watersnakes (N.fasciata pictiventris) are not known to hybridize with Browns......even if it did happen by fluke occurence, it would be an incredibly rare event.

Florida watersnakes do intergrade with Banded watersnakes (N.fasciata fasciata), but not in central FL. A cross between two subspecies is called an intergrade. A cross between two species is called a hybrid.

Hope that helps some....and sounds like it was a great trip. I love Brown watersnakes; they are beautiful snakes.

Shane
-----
Lifelist

Excellent information Shane and thanks for your interest Mark. It was an assumption(and big one I see ) on my part of them hybridizing. Although I don't believe them to be green watersnake. I do however, now believe it could be a pattern variation/"mutation" of the brown watersnake(or just a thought maybe the Florida green watersnake-see below). I didn't locate this road until last year(I have field herped/road cruised the area for seven years); my observations are limited.

We all know in Florida, natural and man made ponds are everywhere, but to a watersnake in a time of drought a slow flowing ditch is an oasis in the desert. Most of these snakes were found in a half mile stretch of road two hours before the first rain in 41 days. Actually I just got out and started walking down the road pushing snakes off the road, catching the more colorful and interesting patterned animals. When water is readily available, the snakes are spread about the area. This means we usually see 0-10 snakes during any given evening 4 or 5 on average. Although when it is very dry they are anywhere you can find copious amounts of fresh water. I have seen these different patterned animals only on this road, so most likely they are just a pattern variation of the brown watersnake that depend on the same water source during the dry sessions.(sorry for the rambling)

I have never seen any watersnakes that I would consider N.floridana in a 20 or so mile radius of this road. Most of the Florida watersnakes that I see in this area have varying shades of orange/red(some to die for!). I must agree the browns have an amazing appearance and attitude!

Once I am able to post some pics I will do so.

Thanks and happy herping,
Ian Daviss

:::::
:::::

It sounds like you may be confusing Brown watersnakes (N.taxispilota) and Florida Green watersnakes (N.floridana).
Post some pics, or in the future, an easy way to tell the difference between the two is to look at their bellies. Browns have a heavily patterned venter, while Florida Greens have an unpatterned belly.

Florida watersnakes (N.fasciata pictiventris) are not known to hybridize with Browns......even if it did happen by fluke occurence, it would be an incredibly rare event.

Florida watersnakes do intergrade with Banded watersnakes (N.fasciata fasciata), but not in central FL. A cross between two subspecies is called an intergrade. A cross between two species is called a hybrid.

Hope that helps some....and sounds like it was a great trip. I love Brown watersnakes; they are beautiful snakes.

Shane