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Thamnophis sirtalis pickeringii
Some kind of snake that I spotted in Butchart Gardens just outside of Victoria in British Columbia. The snake was just sitting in one of the flower beds sunning itself on a cloudy day.
Brilliant. Thanks for your help guys, that certainly sounds (and looks) like the right species.
Thanks ForestDragon. The wandering garter snake and the northwestern garter snake also occur at the spotting location. But the first photo and that website I linked to helped confirm the ID.
There is a Blue Striped Garter Snake, but they are only supposed to occur in Florida. Garters do have a lot of variation in color and pattern, so I am wondering if this is simply a less common variant.
Thanks for clarifying about the color. I wasn't sure if it was just a play of light.
I am unable to view the first picture for your spotting. It may need to be reuploaded.
Certainly those suggestions look very similar to the snake I saw. Though looking at the photos on the Wikipedia pages, the snake I saw was more of a blue-ish colour underbelly than those shown. Though, there seem to be a vast number of subspecies of the Common Garter Snake, so it could easily be one of those. Certainly, the head looks very similar.
There is a good chance that this is a Common Garter Snake:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gart...
Though the Northwest Garter Snake occurs in your area as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwester...
See what you think.
Spotted on Jun 13, 2012
Submitted on Jun 17, 2012
+3
