River Hippie, I wasn’t criticizing, just offering general information for the casual reader. We each have anecdotes to share and that makes posting interesting!
Regardless of species, most snakes, most of the time, will retreat if they feel exposed and threatened. (Exception is granted for a few especially bad-tempered snakes like the Mambas - right, **Crotalus ** ? ) A moccasin partly hidden in a log hollow or similar may depend on camouflage and ignore you, until you make a major provocation. Then it is likely to open that big mouth and expose the white lining, which is its way of saying “Best leave me alone, just move along!”
Once while leading a group of 120 undergraduate biology students on a field trip in the Everglades I had a demonstration of just how persistently a moccasin may rely on this kind of hiding-in-plain-sight. At one point everyone had to file across a fallen log over a fairly deep ditch. I was last person across, preventing stragglers. As I crossed I noticed a moccasin curled up where a branch jutted off the main trunk. Fully 120 pairs of human feet had landed within 6 or 8 inches of this snake over the course of perhaps 10 or 15 minutes, and it never moved. I made everyone come back around and wade the creek, just to look at the animal. Then I touched it gently with a small branch. Sure enough, the mouth opened and the threat display came right on cue. We left it to its solitude. Several hours later, on our exit, it had gone.
Sincerely, I didn’t interpret your post as criticizing.
The first moccassin I ever saw up close was sort of a similar thing. Our group was putting in on Big Piney creek near Russellville AR. I was one of the first in the water and was in my kayak floating in lazy circles in an eddy waiting for the group to put in. Another guy slid into the eddy and said “Wow, that’s a big ass snake!” he pointed his paddle at a rock ledge and sure enough, there he was, well camoflaged on the dark rock. The similar part is that I’d floated within a foot or two of the snake without noticing it! Any snake I’d encountered previously would have been long gone by that point. I was pretty sure it was a moc and a paddle nervously extended in his direction provoked the open mouth display. At that point he’d had enough and slithered off the ledge and into the water, diving under the surface and disappearing.
As someone that’s always had an interest in reptiles and kept and captured many and thought I knew something about them, I was surprised about two things I observed about the moccassins in AR. The first was I would have expected to find them in the slower and swampier sections of the stream but most of the ones I observed were around the rockier and faster sections. The second was that they were out at colder temps than I would have thought. We go there in April and saw some of them when the air temps were probably around 60. Also saw one involved in a death match with a water snake. I didn’t realize they ate snakes.
CannyDan, I went with the brown because of the pattern visible below the hook (or whatever is holding the snake). The fasciata I have seen all had bands that were mostly continuous across the back, while taxispilotas always have the bands interrupted by the row of blotches along the dorsum. Banded versus brown. But for all we know, the things may intergrade. Anyway, you’ve certainly seen more of them than I have. I have spent most of my life in the range of sipedon.
River Hippie, the things you mention as keys to IDing cottonmouths are generally true in my experience, which is more limited than CannyDan’s, particularly the floating thing. If there’s a big brown snake in the water with most of its body above the surface rather than semi-submerged, that’s a cottonmouth. But as Dan said, cottonmouths swim under water just fine when they want to. The best diagnostic feature for me is the head, in ways I can’t explain well in writing. The angular edges, the markings, the position of the eyes; it all creates a sight picture that makes it easy to positively ID a cottonmouth.
Crotalus, I’m not going to really disagree. But here is my mental picture of a brownwhile this is how I remember bandeds, at least in Florida. My gut finds the OP’s snake more like the coastal plain versions of fasciata.
But if nothing else, this highlights my rant as a lumper. I believe that more information about an organism is conveyed by considering all of its variations, and an examination of how / where those variations develop than is conveyed by simply struggling to descriptively separate what are clearly closely allied members of a clade. But that’s just my not so humble opinion .
As for cottonmouths, I fully agree that their heads are distinctive, and angularity is a major part of it. But it isn’t enough description to allow somebody else to reliably make the determination.
Yeah, I don’t feel like it’s useful to tell someone “just go out and catch a hundred of each and you’ll know”.
I will admit that I have not bothered to ID water snakes in the field very carefully. They were generally not what I was looking for, and unless it was something I rarely saw like a crayfish snake, I would pass it by as just another Natrix(yeah, I’m old).
Yeah, I remember, we called them all Natrix!! Then we tied an onion to our belt. Which was the style at the time.
Next thing you know we’ll be talking about our dentures and comparing our bowel movements. Or is it vice-versa? I haven’t got enough practice being old, I forget how it goes .
? ) A moccasin partly hidden in a log hollow or similar may depend on camouflage and ignore you, until you make a major provocation. Then it is likely to open that big mouth and expose the white lining, which is its way of saying “Best leave me alone, just move along!”
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