Snakes               

Introduction

The smooth Green Snake (top picture) is an excellent climber and virtually invisible as it blends into the background while foraging for food. It lives is the dense vegetation of scrubs or vines around a lake or overhanging a stream. It prefers areas with ground cover of thick green vegetation, such as fields, wet meadows, bogs, marsh edges and open woodlands. Active during the day, green snakes feed on crickets, grasshoppers, caterpillars, beetles, spiders, centipedes and millipedes. Green snakes rarely bite when handled and when they do, rarely break the skin. If handled roughly enough they will, like other snakes, exude a foul substance from their anal glands.

The common Garter Snake (bottom picture) is the most wide-ranging and commonly seen snake near water, gardens, meadows, marshes, and woodlands. Undoubtedly, the most commonly encountered snake is the garter snake. This prolific, adaptable species thrives in suburban habitats and often utilizes the shelter provided by shrubbery, mulch, stonewalls and cracked masonry around houses. Active by day, it is often observed in the morning, warming itself on stairs and sidewalks exposed to the sun.

Snakes need to defend themselves against enemies, especially predators. They race away, hide, blend into the background, puff up their bodies, and even play dead. Snakes are unable to regulate their body temperatures by generating heat and, therefore, are called cold blooded. Snakes can warm themselves by basking in the sun, lying under rocks or boards that are in the sun, or by lying on rocks and pavement that hold the heat after dark. When the air temperature is too hot, they seek shelter in small mammal burrows, under rocks and occasionally in cool cellars

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Food Habits

Snakes are active during the day and search for frogs, toads, salamanders, and earthworms. They also eat grasshoppers, crickets, larvae of moths and butterflies, and spiders. Snakes find their prey by sight and scent, and sometimes temperature. Except for burrowing species, snakes have excellent short-range vision. Their sense of smell is extraordinary, thanks to a harmless, constantly flicking forked tongue that carries scent particles to a specialized sensory organ on the roof of their mouth. Some snakes catch their prey by hunting it down, others through ambush, and, although it is not known for certain, most species probably scavenge dead prey as well. Lacking any chewing teeth, all snakes swallow their meals whole. Depending on the size of the meal and the temperature of their resting habitat, our native snakes may eat as often as several times a day or as rarely as once a month.

Family Life

Green snakes emerge in April or May and mate in the late spring or summer. Eggs are laid from June to September, perhaps in two clutches of 4-6 eggs. Females probably incubate the eggs inside their bodies before depositing them in rodent burrows, sawdust piles, mounds of rotting vegetation or rotting logs. As a result, the eggs hatch 4-23 days after they are laid, a short period of time relative to other snakes.

Garter snakes are Live-bearing. They mate mostly late March to early May, occasionally in fall. 7-85 young are born late July to early October. Young are 5-9" (13-23 cm) long; mature in 2 years.Depending on the species, snakes may be egg-layers or give birth to live young. They generally mate in the spring, shortly after leaving whatever hollow, burrow or rock crevice has sheltered them through winter hibernation. Snakes are on their own from the start. Snakes do not take any responsibility for the care and protection of their young. Most snakes mature at one or two years of age, and individuals may live up to twenty years in the wild.

Winter Habits

Snakes hibernate in clusters in community dens

Threats

Snakes and their eggs are in turn eaten by fish, amphibians, other snakes, birds and predatory mammals such as skunks, raccoons and opossums. Birds are their most serious predators - and not just hawks and owls. Songbirds consume great numbers of small snakes and it is not unusual to see the tail of a young garter snake dangling from the overstuffed gullet of a nestling robin!

Benefits

Snakes are important components of natural ecosystems. Common in many types of habitat, they affect the "balance of nature" as both predators and prey. All snakes are predators. Depending on size and species, they may feed on invertebrates such as slugs, worms and insects, or on fish, amphibians, snakes, birds, bird eggs and small mammals.

Problems and Solutions