Cottonmouth?

This big guy was in our backyard yesterday afternoon.

Possible Cottonmouth snake

Snake Head

Anyone confirm what he is?

Update:
Could be a Banded Water Snake or a Mud Snake.

This entry was written by Matthew, posted on July 14, 2007 at 4:43 pm, filed under random and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

3 Comments

  1. Joan
    Posted July 14, 2007 at 9:29 pm | Permalink

    I found one that looks just like it not too long ago dead on a sidewalk downtown. I looked it up too and it looks like a cottonmouth.

  2. Mark Musselman
    Posted July 16, 2007 at 10:10 am | Permalink

    The snake is a Banded Water Snake which has keeled scales and not a Mud Snake which has smooth scales.

    Check out http://www.sc.audubon.org/education/image_cottonmouth.htm for images of an Eastern Cottonmouth. The red bands are not present on a cottonmouth, but the shape of the head is the easiest way to identify the venomous cottonmouth.

  3. Matthew
    Posted July 16, 2007 at 11:07 am | Permalink

    @Mark
    I thought the scales and the body shape were wrong for a mud snake and the head/eyes wrong for a cotton. Thanks for the help with the identity.

2 Trackbacks

  1. By Move along, nothing to see here... on July 14, 2007 at 10:43 pm

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  2. By lowcountryblogs: Little bits of random on July 19, 2007 at 7:02 pm

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