Banded Water Snake

It's getting chilly (only five degrees above freezing right now in Ebro) but a lot of leaves are still on the trees. Our team's search won't be getting into high gear until next month, although some of us are already helping the two full-time teams with their cavity inventories. For the most part we are still in the preparation phase, working on maps, logistics, planning, etc.

Since Wednesday's rains, the river has risen by 7.1 feet at Caryville, almost 2 feet higher than was forecast. It appears to have crested just 3 feet shy of flood stage, and should drop several feet by the weekend as no rain is forecast for about a week.

The cold weather has probably pushed the water snakes and cottonmouths into their winter retreats. Wherever that is. At the famous LaRue Road of southern Illinois, one can encounter dozens of snakes in a single October day migrating from the river bottoms to crevices in rocky hillsides, but in this part of the world, where do snakes go when their summer range is under several feet of water? Do they just move into hollow trees in the swamp? Or crawl a mile or more to high ground stump holes and such beyond the flooded bottomlands? Now there's a good radiotelemetry study for a herpetology student.

Below is a beautifully blotched Florida banded water snake (Nerodia fasciata pictiventris) that Matt Aresco found above Highway 20 on September 16.