A Black-necked Gartersnake we found while hiking a high-elevation stream in Greenlee County, Arizona. This one had lost its pattern entirely, becoming solid grey animal with stripes and its characteristic black patches behind the head.
If you walk a stream in much of Arizona right now, there’s a good chance you’ll run into one of these. It’s a Black-necked Gartersnake, getting breath and a break between dives to eat tadpoles. In any of the isolated pools along this drainage, there may be one or two, filling up on these seasonal globs of protein while they can. This particular snake is a very small baby, likely not much different in age than the tadpoles it’s hunting.
