Juvenile Cottonmouth at Bear Lake

October 1, 2016

Sorry for the noise on this photo. The lighting wasn't so hot.

Hiking Bear Lake Trail in northern Florida, we passed through a variety of habitats from pitcher plant bogs to pine flatwoods. But taking a shallow decline into a cypress swamp, the boardwalk curved around the trunks of buttressed trees and leveled out over the thick mud and ankle-deep water. It was a cool morning and the swamp was quiet except for the distant hammering of a woodpecker in the cypress.

I was standing in the mud off the side of the boardwalk when I heard Eric calling. It sounded like he had a snake so I jumped back onto the boardwalk and jogged over dropping onto my belly, I joined Eric hanging upside down off the boardwalk. It was a juvenile cottonmouth, a little over a foot long. I had my snake tongs with me but, with small snakes, large tongs are clumsy and can be dangerous to both the handler and the snake. So I chose the naturalist's multipurpose tool: the net. One quick sweep and we had her.

Excited to get some good photos, we tromped back to some clean water and rinsed the snake off in the lake. After posing precariously with the snake in the tongs for a few photos, I took it back to the swamp and snapped some photos of my own.

As cottonmouths grow older, their patterns and colours become almost too dark to see. But this young snake still has beautiful, bold banding.

I know I post about cottonmouths at least once a year, but they are my favorite viperid. They have beautiful, sometimes subtle, patterns and have a very unique semi-aquatic ecology. Their specific epithet piscivorus literally means "fish-eater." While it is true that cottonmouths enjoy fish, they are generalist hunters who will even eat carrion. Like most venomous snakes, they have a unique array of defensive strategies from tail vibrations and mock-strikes to their namesake defense of open-mouthed threat. These snakes go to such great lengths to avoid conflict, it's hard to imagine how anyone could see them as aggressive. If you find a cottonmouth, just keep your distance and they'll keep theirs.