Black rat snake

he's a good looking snake ! like the white chin..

Thanks Janson...your description sounds just like my Black Racer down to the white chin. I guess I just haven't looked at snakes with enough detail. The other snake I was talking about fell on me when I opened the sliding door to my barn. That was in Myakka east of Sarasota in an agricultural setting. I'll look it up but probably a corn snake...no photos. It was slender & about 3 ft, I guess. I found an Indigo snake that got caught in Chicken wire & died....that was one of my saddest moments.

Thanks, Janson. They're a dime a dozen around here but this was the earliest I'd seen one out so I thought it was a good time for a pic.

Karen, I seem to be having some trouble with the app on my phone. Entered the scientific name but it must not have gone through. I'll try from my computer. Thanks for the heads up.

Very nice!
Please can you add the scientific name to your spottings so that we can take them off of the "unknown" list & add a link (wikipedia etc) to the references. Because we have a global user base & sometimes many different common names for the same species, the system will continue to show a spotting as unidentified until the scientific name has been completed. Thanks!

So you guys...what do I look for to tell the difference? I had what I thought were rat snakes when I lived out in the country but they were brown patterned with yellow/reddish

Thanks but this spotting belongs to Flanagan. I need to add one of my several hundred black rat spottings. :-)

Ratsnakes and racers are not the same. In fact, they are in different genera - Elaphe (Pantherophis) and Coluber, respectively.

The next two pics came up fine...we call these snakes Black Racers. I assume they are the same thing. They always startle me when I first see them and then they put a smile on my face.

Must have had trouble loading. I'll try it again. It was about four feet long. He was a nice looking snake with a lot of orange that didn't really show up well in the pics I took.

Did the head of the snake not load? He looks like a long one!