California Kingsnake

I caught it and put it in a cloth bag to keep it calm. It was one of those reusable shopping bags and it felt like quite an appropriate reuse of the bag.

Kingsnakes have a very unusual habit – they will hunt and eat venomous snakes including rattlesnakes. They have developed immunity to the venom. The “king” in their name comes from this habit. They are found throughout California. They are a sub-species of the Common Kingsnake which ranges over much of the USA.

I decided to release him near Sunol Regional Wilderness. When I opened the bag, it took some prodding to get it going. It slowly poked its head out of the bag and then glided smoothly out to its freedom. At first it wanted to head towards the road and I had to persuade it to go in the other direction.

Since it was not moving too fast, we were able to take this video.

You can find out more about Bay Area reptiles on our reptiles page. An earlier nocturnal encounter with a Kingsnake is in this post.

A white butterfly flew by which turned out to be a Cabbage White. Then a bigger, more colorful butterfly caught my attention. It was a Painted Lady. This is the butterfly whose spring migration is in the news every few years. Veritable rivers of these beautiful insects flow through the Bay Area. The last migration we witnessed was in 2009. We were lucky in having one of these rivulets flow through our backyard that spring.

I shot a few photos with the zoom lens. Since it is nearing the end of the season, you can see that this lady was showing signs of aging. As I was looking through the photos later, I noticed something I had missed in the field. There was another lady nearby, a ladybird beetle. It is most likely a Seven-spotted Lady Beetle,  a European species that has become quite common in the US after an accidental introduction. It is useful for controlling aphids.

You can read more about butterflies and other insects on sfbaywildlife.info.

While I thought seeing what could have been either a California Red-sided Gartersnake or a Coast Gartersnake (frustratingly hard to identify, especially if you only get a quick look) at Tilden Regional Park was fortuitous, our neighbor brought over one that he had found crossing a decently large street next to our house in Pleasanton.

California Red-sided Gartersnake found crossing a nearby street

We were able to get some pretty nice looks at it – and are somewhat hesitatingly identifying this one as a California Red-sided Gartersnake – before releasing it safely into the nearby hills.

A Google search leads me to believe that the bush with the red berries is a Pyracantha, though I am not entirely sure. You will be surprised how hard it is to identify a plant with an obvious feature like bright red berries. And plants do not move around or disappear on you.

Sharp-tailed Snake

In early November, I came across an interesting inhabitant of our backyard. It was a Sharp-tailed Snake. We see them every once in a while, usually in summer. This was a small one, lying still under some leaf debris because of the cold weather I suspect. At first I thought it was dead but it had burrowed under the surface by the time I came back in a few minutes.

These small, secretive snakes are seldom seen by most people. I had never seen one until we moved to this house on the outskirts of town in the Tri-Valley area of the East Bay. They are nocturnal and tend to burrow under things – leaf litter, logs, rocks. Their favorite food is slugs. They are reddish in color above and have a striking black-and-white pattern below. The tail ends in a sharp spike which gives them their name.

Sharp-tailed Snake underside

They are gentle and harmless and should be left alone.

More information can be found at sfbaywildlife.info.