Eastern fox Snake waiting for a warbler meal on a cool morning.
From a distance we could see that 9 feet above the ground in a sapling there was a brown ball. Why? What was it? We were on a noted wildlife sanctuary. We neared the “ball” and…Uh oh! Trouble! Not for us but for the warblers that seemed to be using this sapling-top corridor. For just one branch over on this cool morning, coiled tightly around the waving upright trunk, was a beautiful eastern fox snake, Pantherophis vulpinus,(formerly Elaphe vulpina gloydi). We photographed the coiled snake and moved onward, leaving the migrating warblers to fend for themselves. This snake proved to be the first of many, the others being seen along the many dikes. The range of this this pretty northern rat snake closely follows the shorelines of western and northern Lake Erie, eastern Lake Huron, and the region between these two Great Lakes.