Building [garter] snake habitat

[jmonahan]

Here's a pic of some habitat I'm trying to put together. In the front is an ephemeral pond, in the back is a hibernaculum. The pond filled up this last spring (first year for it) with about 4 foot of water. It was great to see the frogs move into it over the course of the summer. We had 5 species resident by mid summer. Along the back of the pond are cement slabs from our garage re-do. A few red-sided garters and a couple radix moved in by late summer. They are protected from the multitude of predators we have here once within these rocks.

Just visible in the back, right side of the pic is the hibernaculum. Its the second one I've built and quiet a bit bigger than the first - not as deep, but more area. I hope to see many snakes emerge from these rocks next spring! My hunch is that these two things - good cover and good areas to hibernate are the chief limiters of snake populations. Maybe this little experiment will help me find out.

11485

[slipknot711]

thats great! ty for sharing

[MDahms]

I was just reading about this last night. What a great idea, to build this on your property.
It would be nice too see conservation authorities adding artificial hibernaculums to areas with species in decline. In Ontario there are several organizations that have websites that show how to build hibernaculums, The Long Point Basin Land Trust is one, this being one of the only area of Ontario where Eastern Fox snakes and Grey ratsnakes can be found.


Mike

[d_virginiana]

Nice! You're lucky to live near a hibernaculum.

[jmonahan]

I'll look that up Mike, thanks. There isn't a lot of research on artificial hibernacula - what works, where and why. When we moved to our farm we found and old well. About 15 feet down was the water level, no way to know how deep the water was. But the thought of my son falling into it motivated me to fill it up with broken chunks of concrete I found elsewhere on the farm. I tried to choose pieces that created holes large enough for big fox snakes, but not so large that small snakes couldn't crawl up. Anyway, not very scientific, but the following spring I watched 8-10 snakes emerging from it, all male garters. They hung around the rocks coursing back and forth looking for females. If I got down close and wiggled my fingers they would stream over close and carefully smell my hand.

So anyway, we built this larger hibernacula with a backhoe. Its 7ft deep and maybe 10 feet wide with a sloping bottom. Its filled with broken brick, covered with heavy rubber and earth. Facing south by south west. We'll see...

Joe
Boone Iowa

[jmonahan]

Grey rat snakes? Ontario? I did not know that!