Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I found this and several other garters like it in a drained, wooded, drained spaginum marsh near my house in central Ontario, Canada. Butler's are not known in my area but have been found in iscolated populations about 75 miles, 125 km, to the north and also to the south a little further. I have posted photos in the photo gallery under garter snakes. there should be one photo below and a link to another. I sent these photos to some herpetologists and herp societies and they all agreed it was a butlers garter. Then I told the Conservation Authority responsible for the area and the said it was just an eastern garter.

my other garter pic

Hard to say. According to Conant, the side stripe on butleri involves half of scale row 2, all of 3 & half of 4. Eastern has the stripe on rows 2 & 3. From your pics, I'd say the stripe entails half of row 1, all of 2, & half of 3. One other thing he mentions that may be of assistance is behavior. When excited, the butleri "wriggles vigorously from side to side, but the rather meager forward progress is all out of proportion to the amount of energy expended." If the snake is much over two feet, it pretty much has to be a sirtalis, since the butleri barely exceed two feet as a max, & the sirtalis can exceed four feet.

Hope that helps...BTW, just because the guys "in charge" say it's one thing, that doesn't necessarily make it so. The state of Florida didn't acknowledge the presence of the Florida panther in Palm Beach County despite numerous reliable sightings, until they busted a guy for killing one.

~~Greg~~