Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am on my first vacation of the year, in Northern California. Today I decided to drive up the coast in search of Garter Snakes. It was sunny and about 70 degrees. I started off in the city of Santa Cruz and headed north. Here's what the coast looked like:

I walked along a trail that lead to the ocean. Alongside the trail was a small creek. After walking a bit, I turned around and headed back to by car. As I approached the car, I saw this hunting in the creek:

I was pretty excited, it is the first Coast Garter Snake I've ever seen.

Afterwards I drove further up the coast and found a marshy area to explore that was adjacent to a waterway. It wasn't long before I saw my favorite type of garter, a large female Santa Cruz Garter Snake.

As I was capturing the snake, I saw another Santa Cruz, this one a male (which was probably courting the female). He wasn't too pleased with being caught.

Here's another photo of the male - he had more contrast than the female.

Photographing wild snakes isn't always easy, but I attempted a shot of the "happy couple" before allowing them to go on their way.

After finding the snakes, I took a break to check out the seals (I've never seen Elephant Seals before).

A little while later I went back to a spot about 250 yards from where the Santa Cruz Garters were found. I was walking through the tall vegetation when I saw something that looked like a "flame" morph of Eastern Garter Snake. It was another Coast Garter, this one had a lot of red coloration.

Even its belly was suffused in red-orange.

It was one cool-looking snake.

My final stop was a secluded lake that has a good population of California King Snakes. I didn't see any kings, but did find this young male Santa Cruz Garter under a log.

It was a great day to be out looking for snakes!
Third Eye

Nice lookin' animals! Looks like you had a good adventure! Take care! Jeff

Gorgeous Garters!

By the way, what sort of Garter would have been likely to be found in the general vicinity of Big Sur, back in the early 1960s? The way I remember the appearance of that snake; s/he was very dark (nearly black) with a very yellow dorsal stripe and a yellow lateral stripe on each side, without any checkers, spots, or red. My Mom caught it in my butterfly net. (At the time, my Mom was younger than I am now.) That was my introduction to Garter snakes, and snakes in general.

Snakey Lakey

That sounds like a Diablo Garter. It's the western type of Santa Cruz Garter. Here's a three-striped Santa Cruz that I found on Mount Hamilton yesterday. It looks very similar to a Diablo Garter.

Tim

Thank-you very much for solving that little mystery for me. I had been curious about the variety of that first Garter snake, ever since the 1970s when I learned that there were many sub-species of Gartersnakes.

I had that very nice Diablo Range Gartersnake for about a year, when I was between the ages of 5 and 10, then we let it go again in the greater Big Sur area, back in the general region where it had been caught. As I said in my earlier post, this was back in the early 1960s, at a time before I had learned that releasing a snake that has spent any time in captivity is not a good idea.

Since that first Gartersnake, Garters have been my favorite snakes. One of my two current snakes is a Garter.

Snakey Lakey

Cool pics! Those coast garters are pretty nice, but the Santa Cruz garters are the best

Dan