Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I posted a message a long time asking jeff about catching eastern milks near my PA home. Just wondering: do they mind heavily trafficked areas? Because i live on a farm, and all the fields get pretty well trampled. Would i have better luck if i try looking in less disturbed habitat? A lot of the land around my area is farmland, which is great for garters and water snakes, but Ive never found anything else at home, always have to go somewhere else. I've never even found a black rat snake around home, whough my dad used to find some shed black rat skins around the barn a couple years ago. Please respond, anyone.

a lot of snakes are found at the boundaries of habitats. So in a farmland situation, you might look for old buildings, log piles, etc., at the edge of wooded areas, rather than in the middle of the fields. I know the subspecies can be different in a lot of ways, but i caught a florida king literally in a backyard, in a situations where the backyards of a row of houses at the edge of a heavily populated area backed up to really tiny remaining wooded habitat adjacent to a highway. I caught a black king under a rock on the hilly berm of a two-lane highway in kentucky. I've been with guys in virginia who caught chain kings in fields behind convenience stores, in trash piles at the intersections of interstate highways, under fallen billboards adjacent to four-lane highways, but in all these instances the finds were at the intersection of those busy, populated areas, and fields or woods--the edges of different habitats.
terry

Yeah, I know what you're saying. The biggest problem with finding some types of herps around my home is habitat fragmentation. There are barely any woodlots. There are just isolated tree rows about twenty feet wide and however long. There are tons of eastern garters and norhtern waters, though. Not coincidentally, there's also a healthy population of American toads and a huge population of Fowler's toads. I am really and truly surprised that there don't seem to be certain types of snakes around here that i would expect. It can be frustrating, but catching some garters and toads usually makes me feel better.