A Visit to Snake Road

Here is a visit to snake road in Southern Illinois where one of the largest snake migrations happens in North America during the fall and the spring.

The most common sighting on snake road is the cottonmouth or water moccasin with a Latin name of Agkistrodon piscivorus.

Snake road is just a park ranger maintenance road. But eventually the park rangers noticed how many snakes were crossing during specific times of the year so they close it of during their migration. It is still somewhat of a hidden place and it is out in the middle of nowhere in the Shawnee National Forest. No snake touching, collecting or moving is allowed to keep their habitat and habits in place.

I learned from another visitor to snake road to check the post next to the sign for frogs. It seems there are always tree frogs inside this thing. I'm sure these guys are a favorite snack for many of the snake species that live here. I suspect these green guys are Hyla cinerea.

Right off the bat on the road I saw a northern leopard frog aka Lithobates pipiens. Another snack for the snakes if it is too slow.

Then later I saw gray tree frog (Hyla chrysoscelis) which is a quicker snack for the snake. They have to be fast to catch these guys.

Part of what makes the snake migration happen is a swampy area on the right of the road where all the snake food is. They'll eat fish, frogs and insects in here during the summer.

Then off to the left are a bunch of sandstone cliffs where they can find small caves and holes to hibernate in for the winter. I'm sure if you are brave enough to climb these cliffs there will be all sorts of snakes to be found.

Now its time to look for snakes. The first guy we saw was a smooth greensnake (Opheodrys vernalis).

They are nonvenomous and are quite hard to see when they are in their natural grassy or leafy habitat. They also tend to be up in trees making them almost impossible to find.

Fortunately that is one of the benefits of snake road. It is just a flat gravel road where you can see them crawling across out in the open. I've lived in Illinois for 20+ years and this is the first time I finally found one even though they are all over the state.

The next sighting was in a flooded area of the road. This is a common watersnake (Nerodia sipedon) and its still a baby. At this size they can get eaten by other snakes.

The water was deep so I had to wade through barefoot. I managed to scare up a couple more baby water snakes. These guys are not venomous and you can make a differentiation by looking at their eye. If they have a vertical slit pupil then they are venomous, most likely a cotton mouth. But if their pupil is round like this they are some kind of nonvenomous water snake.

Now for the cottonmouth again. I saw quite a few on snake road and even though you are carefully looking to the front and sides of you on the road you'll hear a rustling in the leaves right next to you and suddenly a cottonmouth will be right next to your foot.

The juvenile cottonmouths kind of resemble a copperhead in their body coloring. I'm sure they need to be more camouflage to avoid being eaten by the larger snakes.

This young one didn't seem to know how to do the wide open mouth warning correctly. Instead he just lifted up his head. I wonder if people get bitten more by the younger ones?

Thankfully the larger adults will warn you of their presence by hissing a bit and wiggling their tails and doing their open mouth threat. I'm sure this is mostly to warn you not to step on them.

This time around we only saw three snake species but we ran into other people on the road who saw some timber rattlers and copperheads. There are also milk snakes and various garter snakes here as well.

Next time we'll come visit here during spring when the snakes are warming up and emerging from the cliffs to go back in the water. I'm hoping to see a timber rattler next time.

That's all for now, thanks for looking and watch where you are stepping lol :-)