Snakes

WI? I checked the thread out to see Florida stuff.

I took a brief walk about today and quickly spotted the first 2 snakes in WI for me this year.  A 4 ft fox snake and an eastern garter snake.

Close enough to a snake for me!   Lol

Not a snake, but a legless lizard.  I caught this Eastern Glass Lizard today in the pine flatwoods of SW Florida.   We have the western variety in WI.

Gman,
That color morph is just simply awesome.

Here's a cute one. NOT in WI, but we have them. A baby pigmy rattler.

Plenty of snakes in the yard today.  Hank saw them for the first time today and was not happy about it. 

Net,
I zoomed in on your photo.  Those are Chicago Garter Snakes based on the dark vertical lines that interrupt the lower stripe on the front 1/3 of the body.  It is a subspecies of common garter snake, found in SE Wisconsin and NE Illinois.

On a job today spotted this…. Foursome in the sun, yikes not a snake guy.

This guy came out of the mud today. Earliest I believe I've seen one. 

With all the warm weather coming up, I am looking forward to getting out into the field and searching for WI reptiles again (along with photographing migrating waterfowl, open water musky fishing, pike fishing, walleye fishing, prepping for next duck season, etc, etc).

About 4 more weeks or so and I will start to find these on warm afternoons....

He was trying to stay away from “The Snake“ . Lol

Too warm for anything to hibernate. Remember a frog is an amphibian not a reptile 40° weather might slow them down a little bit but not like a reptile.

Wasn't sure where to post this, was either the snake thread or the turtle thread. 

Since snakes eat frogs, thought I'd post it here....

Today while river fishing (with some ice on the river shoreline), I see a frog sitting on a rock on the shoreline.

When I get closer, the frog jumps in the water, and I watched him swim away.

Don't frogs burrow under the water surface into the muck to hibernate through winter?

What was a frog doing sitting on a rocky shoreline when the outside temp was 42, and the water was 35?

hockeyguy,
The garter snake you saw was definitely a sizeable adult.  I believe it is a pregnant female based on what I can tell from your photo.  You must have come across it just after it had swallowed its meal (large frog, toad, etc) as its meal bulge has not yet been pushed all the way back into the stomach, based on the photo.

In regard to its true size, we can infer that from the ground litter.  There are red pine needle clusters on the ground near the snake (needles in groups of 2).  Red pine needles range in size from 4-6 inches in length.  If I take the needle length at the max of 6 inches, I would estimate that snake at around 40 inches in length.  Still a sizeable garter snake.  The largest I ever remember catching (out of hundreds I've handled) was maybe 43-45 inches.