Garter Snakes

Hiking along the Trans Canada Trail on Vancouver Island, I spotted this medium sized (75cm / 2.5ft) garter snake in the grass and I managed to get some decent photographs of it.



A woman came along on a bicycle, and to her credit she slowed down to see what I was looking at. And amazingly, she didn't say "eek!" or "yuck". She stopped and said she'd like to get a photograph of it too. Thankfully I was pretty much finished photographing it so I backed away. Since she seemed to be a nature lover I thought she would approach carefully, but no, she jumped off her bike, pulled out her phone, and proceeded to shove it about six inches from the snake. Like any self respecting snake, it immediately disappeared into the bush. I think the woman was a bit put out - why did the snake let me photograph it, but not her? What she hadn't seen was my approach. As soon as I'd seen the snake (from about 10 feet away) I'd stopped and slowly backed up to 20 feet away, taken off my pack, got out my camera, and then approached very slowly, not making any sudden movements. I took photographs as I approached, knowing that it could "run" away at any time. I was lucky I had spotted it from a decent distance. Often you only see the movement as they leave the scene.



A bit later I was taking photographs of these Spring Azure butterflies puddling. (They're a brilliant blue on the top of their wings when they're flying but not very colorful on the ground.) I was so focused on the butterflies that it wasn't till I finished taking a whole series of photographs that I realized there was a small garter snake (about 30cm / 1ft long) just past them. I'd moved slowly approaching the butterflies so I hadn't spooked it. It had quite different coloring from the larger one. I don't think this was age related since I saw other larger ones with even darker coloring. Garter snakes have quite a range of coloring. There are even some totally black melanistic ones. (the opposite of albino)



These ones were close to the water where there was ample food in the form of tadpoles and frogs. (Garter snakes are excellent swimmers.) But I also saw some in quite dry areas where they probably eat insects and worms.