Reptile & Amphibian Forums

LGBrooksi wanted to see some pics of canefield kings... well, I don't have pictures of all the canefield kings I've caught, but here are a bunch. I'll list by county, and by animal.

Palm Beach County:

This one kind of looks like a Pinellas county king, still Palm Beach county:

Hendry County

Glades County:

Well, I could dig around and find more pics, but thats for another day. I only made it out to the canefields once this season...

Nick

Man those are some awesome looking Floridana ! I especially like 0022 with those rich brown and yellow colors. Whats the locale on him ? Do you plan on breeding some Floridana locales this year ?

Keith
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Hey Keith,

That's a western Palm Beach county king. He was found south of Lake Harbor, pretty close to the Miami Canal, under a big rock. First I'd managed to catch.

I'm not breeding any kings this year, maybe next year.

Wow! Such a diversity, those are a great group of Kings! Thanks for posting.
Todd Hughes

AWESOME PICTURES!!!

Thanks a bunch for posting -- the diversity in the patterns/colors is quite interesting, indeed. A couple of questions:

I noticed a lot of oak leaves & pine needles in your pictures -- were some of these snakes found in those habitats as opposed to cane field ditch banks?

Also, were the juvenile snakes found in the grass/weeds along the ditch banks or under trash/debris? As an FYI, my experience has been that, almost 100% without exception, Florida Kings found on the ditch banks are at least 3 1/2 feet in length (there is a theory that the juveniles stay underground until reaching this size in order to avoid predation by adult Kings). The only snake smaller than 3 1/2 ' that I've seen (which occurred during Univ. of Florida Kingsnake surveys involving multiple people searching) was found on an overcast morning right after a rain event.

Thanks again for the pics (and I will assume you didn't intend to imply that you found/saw ALL these snakes on your one/only trip out into the cane fields this year...)

Tim

A full 1/3 of the kings I find are juveniles under 2.5 feet. Most of the kings I find don't exceed 3.5 feet. My hunting methods do not involve looking for snakes active on the canal bank, though. I almost exclusively hunt artificial cover, though I have found kings out in the open, including one that was less than 3 feet in length. You can generally assume that all these snakes were found under trash/debris, though some were found under large rocks.

Juveniles are known by collectors to be nocturnal, and it's not uncommmon to find them crossing canefield roads at night. I know someone that has found them out in the open on canal banks at night.

I have found kings in the middle of fields right next to Australian pines and oak trees, and not next to any trees at all. In my experience, they inhabit any dry habitat adjacent to the water (canal or lake) as long as there is some sort of cover available, whether it be thick grass or trash. I've not found any live FL Kings outside the canefield region.

No, only a few of those pics were from earlier this year, I only found 6 kings on that trip.

... I too have found kings just about everywhere down there.
Last year I found 3 yearlings, 1 was on the crawl on a bank around 10:00 am or so. The other two were under cover along the banks. All during the daytime and all on the banks or similar.
Here's one posed (and pissed)..

:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

www.crimsonking.funtigo.com

What a nice bunch of pics. Thanks for taking the time to share them. While I'm not much into Fla. Kings anymore your pics reminded me of some nice animlas I used to own and I think you've accidentally got my wheels spinning in that direction again. Fla. Kings are very cool.
Bob.