Earl, it’s a water snake, non-venomous, probably the species that Cannydan and I disagred about last year. I think it is a brown water snake.
Thank you!
Not so fast. What snakes are common in your area?
Here’s a partly related blog post I made about copperheads vs other snakes, with pix: http://tapu-tapu-tapu.blogspot.com/2012/06/appalachian-summer.html
Google Copperhead Snake and look at Images. It is very hard to distinguish a copperhead from a lot of other snakes. And you want to err on the side of caution. Oh yeah.
I agree the marking look like the brown water snake. But the OP’s pic looks like it has a diamond head.
Sorry, you have to move.
The brown water snakes that I see in Google Images also have a triangular head (is that what you mean?). I agree that it’s not a copperhead, because I see them all the time, and it does look a lot like the other brown water snakes in Google Images - there are even other pics there of them eating fish, which I’ve never seen a copperhead do.
Serpentem coxis.