Normally the underside of the chin, some labial scales and some scales on the side of the head can have their normal color, whitish or brownish. Since the location of the individual normal colored scales is different in each snakes you can easily distinguish individual specimens.

I witnessed a few adult males of the Lake Erie Watersnake leaving the hibernaculum and staying in close proximity with their heads held high, apparently checking the area for females. I caught a melanistic hoghose snake near Kalamazoo in the 1950s. Towards the tale less and less scales are normal colored. The Pelee Island population of the Eastern garter Snake has a  considerable portion (27%) of melanistic snakes. The common garter snake is the most variable of the Thamnophis species in western WA. A lengthy walk there on Long Point Trail 6 had us coming across this substantial Melanistic Eastern Garter Snake. It was when we returned to our vehicle about an hour later that we took notice of this Melanistic Eastern Garter Snake basking in the late afternoon sunshine. I have checked around. Thanks again. A big difference is the long hibernation of the much further north living melanistic Eastern Garter Snake. This is an Eastern Garter Snake that we photographed near Whitby, Ontario, one early spring day. Be it roaming the globe or outbacking in Canada, we always look forward to what is around the next corner.

Here (Pelee Island) the Eastern Garter Snake shares its habitat with the Lake Erie Water Snake, Nerodia sipedon insularum  (Bol, personal observations). Perhaps that is why Melanistic Eastern Garter Snakes are more common in the northern reaches of their range. Adult males are typically approximately 70 – 80 cm long and they are relatively slender build.

Bald Eagles we sighted on Vancouver Island, B.C. The best find of last week came from one of the field sites on South Bass Island in Lake Erie. Albino Granite Checkered Garter Snake '20. Someone had discarded a bale of straw there among the dogwood and willow thickets, and the snake found it a welcome place to curl up and rest. The melanistic morph is truly the first and most classic color morph of Thamnophis. All information contained in this blog is provided "as is". The Eastern Garter Snake occurs from Eastern Canada to the Southern tip Florida and in  the eastern half of the USA. All information, pictures, and videos contained within these World Wide Web postings is Copyright: Frame To Frame - Bob and Jean Also some scales on the sides can have their normal color, especially some scales on the lateral stripes. I think the snake we saw was close to that length as well.

They are easy feeders. '20. Eastern Garter Snakes hibernate in a hibernaculum between October and early April.

Hi Kyle, I stumbled across your post while trying to confirm what I found. So it is distributed over a very wide area and occurs in many climatic zones and habitats. Hibernation may last from end of September to the end of April (as long as 7 month) in the wild (in: Seymour and King, 2003). Melanism is an overabundance of melanin, a pigment responsible for dark coloration.