Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok I wasn't looking for them but I was bird watching. So I went to my local nature center and I heard a rustle so Ilook at the rocks and there's at least 5-10 garter snakes on 1 rock. So I caught 2 took some photos then caught another 1 after. These were North western garters. The 3rd one I caught was almost all black with barely a stripe. Is this normal? Oh and I caught 2 mating but didn't have time to get some pics of those. I thought in Victoria Bc Canada they didn't come out till a little later. It wasn't even that warm only 8 degrees Celsius but had fun and saw lots of birds too. They must've just came out of hibernation. This was where I found the den 2 years ago. I'll download the photos later.

Photo of garter snakes where I found them

Me holding two of them

Snakegal,
A rare sight,---someone from B.C. posting on this forum.

From the photo of you holding the two garter snakes, indeed they appear to be T. ordinoides (Northwestern Garter Snake). The species is highly polymorphic in that within (and between) populations it is common to observe a large number of different color morphs with respect to basic ground color, blotching, flecking, and number of stripes. So your observation of differences between specimens is the usual situation.

Assume that you had pretty nice weather conditions during the first half of March as was the case here in Oregon. That brought out the reptiles. All species in the NW are cool temperature tolerant so finding them out in the temperature you mentioned, providing there was some sunshine, is also not unusual.

Richard F. Hoyer (Corvallis, Oregon)