Swimming Northern Watersnake

Here's a Northern Watersnake swimming in the small pond at Sourland Mountain Preserve. I had just gotten pictures of a couple of Canada Goose families, a possible breeding pair of Mallards, and a mudpuddling Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly when I spotted this snake in a muddy area adjacent to the pond. Northern Watersnakes are pretty comfortable in the water, and this fella immediately escaped the area by swimming into the pond.

Though my documentation says the Northern Watersnake can have a mean disposition and has some tendency to bite - they're non-venomous - all of them that I've run across either fled from me or (perhaps because I wasn't deemed to be too close) ignored me.

May 27, 2021 at Sourland Mountain Preserve
Photo 133210590, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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