These very large Banded Water Snakes are engaged in coitus
Notice the small head and eyes visible from above.
This is a non-poisonous, harmless snake.
This Florida Banded Water Snake (Nerodia fasciata pictiventris) got caught in one of the bird nets over my ponds. While this guy appears quite menacing he is actually mostly harmless. When threatened, he defends himself by biting and smearing his tormentor with a foul smelling musk, but he is non-venomous.
Though these snakes are mainly active at night they may be found during the day sunning on bank of waterbodies or on vegetation hanging over water. They feed on live or dead fish, frogs, and aquatic invertebrates. On really hot days they will sometimes fall from tree's branches where they are trying to cool themselves.
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When I hauled the net out of the water this snake appeared all the more scary. He was, however, not a record setter. . .though likely very close. . . the record is 62.5 ". I guess this guy was about 5 feet long with a body as thick as my wrist (he'd likely eaten just before getting stuck in the net).
It took a bit of effort to cut the snake free from the net but he was fine. Thankfully I found him before he died from struggling with the net.
I had been screwing around with the camera so all of the images are unusual. I did my best to enhance the black and white images so that one could see how big the snake was in comparison to my feet and hands. Better images are below of other Florida banded water snakes.
Often confused with the cottonmouth snake (Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti) Florida's water snakes are often needlessly killed. While they have a full mouth of teeth and will bite viciously to defend themsleves, there is no excuse for killing water snakes out of confusion.
The easiest way to distinguish a water snake from a cottonmouth is the vertical pupil of the cottonmouth. A poisonous viper—the cottonmouth—when viewed from above has eyes that are not visible while conversely the water snake's eyes are clearly visible when viewed from above. The shape of the head can be confused on these large snakes, but a cottonmouth's head is always more triangular in shape. See all of my snake photos at:
Phillip's Natural World
and
Phillip's Natural World
Once I got the snake out of the water he began violently trying to remove himself from the net, making it tighten more like a noose. Notice his head got quite small wrapped in the net, definitely not a viper.
I got out scissors and gloves. . . even a non-poisonous snake bite can cause great discomfort and infection from salmonella and other germs or bugs. I carefully snipped the snake free from the net.
Very little worse for wear, he quickly recovered and took off into the bushes.
For those who would kill such a snake. . .know that the Florida banded watersnake bears live young with litters of 20-30. The young are born 8 - 10 " in length so you might kill one but there are always more nearby.
For my part I'm going to remove the remaining nets from the ponds. The Southern River Otters (Lutra canadensis) have eaten all the fish anyway. The nets were to keep birds from eating the fish. The otters work as teams and lift the nets, eating the fish that the birds don't get first.
Banded Water Snakes have great camouflage and are largely unnoticed in the natural environment. When they cross sidewalks or driveways they become much more visible to humans.
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Desolation Islands Exhibit Rapid Climate Change
The Kerguelen Islands are an overseas territory of France. But their far-off location in the southern Indian Ocean places these islands far closer to Antarctica than to mainland Europe. In fact, the islands are so remote and the landscape so harsh that they have also been called the “Desolation Islands.”
On October 28, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of the Kerguelen Islands. Grande Terre (French for “large land”) is the most sizeable in the island group. Its steep fjords and peninsulas are ringed by hundreds of smaller islands, which bring the archipelago’s total land area to 7215 square kilometers (2,786 square miles).
Penguin and seal populations are among the wildlife that thrive on Grande Terre. But because of its remoteness—and the severely cold, windy weather—you won’t find many people. Most residents of the island are scientists based in the settlement of Port-aux-Français, where they study everything from geology and biology to weather and climate.
One area of research involves the myriad bodies of ice. Researchers have shown that between 1963 and 2001, ice-covered areas of the Kerguelen Islands shrank by 21 percent—a phenomenon that’s in-line with what’s happening in Patagonia, South Georgia, and other sub-polar latitudes. Over the same span, the Cook Ice Cap (center) shrank from 501 to 403 square kilometers. And the losses have continued: Subsequent research published in Nature noted that glacier wastage on the islands during the 2000s was “among the most dramatic on Earth.” The main reason was less precipitation and drier air.
But that just scratches the surface of the region’s interesting features. The islands are actually some of highest points on a huge underwater plateau. Given the right nutrients and physical conditions, spectacular blooms of phytoplankton can make an appearance in the waters over the plateau.
References and Related Reading
Atlas Obscura, Kerguelen Islands. Accessed November 28, 2016.
Favier, V. et al. (2016, September 1) Atmospheric drying as the main driver of dramatic glacier wastage in the southern Indian Ocean. Scientific Reports, 6:32396.
Glacier Hub (2016, October 18) Precipitation Controls Retreat of Kerguelen’s Glaciers. Accessed November 28, 2016.
Glacier Hub (2016, March 11) Photo Friday: The Kerguelen Islands. Accessed November 28, 2016.
NASA Earth Observatory (2007, March 6) Kerguelen Islands.
NASA Ocean Color Web (2016) Ocean Color Feature.
Suomi NPP: VIIRS Imagery and Visualization Team Blog (2012, November 9) Remote Islands, part III: Îles Kerguelen and Heard Island. Accessed November 28, 2016.
Verfaillie, D. et al. (2015, March 30) Recent glacier decline in the Kerguelen Islands (49°S, 69°E) derived from modeling, field observations, and satellite data. Geophys. Res. Earth Surf., 120 (3), 637–654.
The Furious Fifties
Antarctic Convergence Zone
A rare break in the clouds on February 15, 2007, gave the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite a chance to capture this photo-like image of the Kerguelen Islands. Located in the southern Indian Ocean roughly midway between Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, the Kerguelen Islands experience a fierce climate, with incessant, howling winds and rain or snow nearly every day. At a latitude of about 49° South, the islands lie in the path of the “Furious Fifties,” a belt of westerly winds that whip around the Southern Hemisphere, mostly unimpeded by land.
The islands were formed over millions of years by a series of lava flows. The perimeter of the large island is carved by fjords, and the rocky landscape is very sparsely vegetated with grasses, mosses, and a plant in the cabbage family. Glaciers are scattered across the island. The largest is Cook Glacier, in the west. The highest point on the island is Mount Ross, which has an elevation of 1,850 meters; it is also thought to be the youngest volcanic peak on the island. In a handful of fjords, the water appears greenish. The color is probably due to very fine sediment ground down by the enormous friction the glaciers generate as they scrape over the land. Rivers and streams flush this sediment out to the coast.
Despite the challenging climate, several animals and birds make their homes at Kerguelen or use it as a stopping over point in their migrations or during breeding. Among the wildlife on the Kerguelen Islands are several species of penguins, elephant and fur seals, and dozens of species of birds, including terns and albatrosses. The sea makes this “wildlife sanctuary” possible; the islands are located along the Antarctic Convergence Zone, where the icy waters of the Southern Ocean meet the warmer waters of the Indian Ocean. The waters in this mixing area are very rich in nutrients, which support the ocean plants, phytoplankton, which are the foundation of the ocean food web.
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