California King Snake

Description:

Smooth, shiny, unkeeled scales. The head is barely wider than the neck. Highly variable in appearance. Most commonly seen with alternating bands of black or brown and white or light yellow, including the underside, where the light bands become wider. A striped phase with a white or light yellow stripe on the back occurs in coastal southern California. An unbanded phase with a dark belly and lateral striping occurs in the northern San Joaquin Valley and southern Sacramento Valley. A dark banded phase with a dark underside occurs in coastal Los Angeles County, some with a high number of bands. A desert phase occurs with dark black bands and narrow bright white bands. Some variants have much dark speckling in the light bands, others with much light speckling in the dark bands.

Habitat:

Found in a wide variety of habitats - forest, woodland, chaparral, grassland, marshes, farmland, ranches, deserts, and even brushy suburban areas

Notes:

This is a wild caught recessive mutation that occurs in many captive bred specimens. This individual was caught around 2,000 ft elevation in San Diego County.