My girlfriend and I went to the Caw Caw Nature & History Interpretive Center in Ravenel, SC on Sunday, February 20. It was a beautiful day in the low 60s. Caw Caw has a lot of paths through wetlands that used to be a rice plantation. We walked around on two of the trails the park has to offer and got to see many different types of wildlife, including ducks, alligators, and snakes.
We saw eight American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) and all were larger than 6 ft long with the largest appearing to be about 10 ft long. All of them were ba
sking in the sun when we saw them but a couple of the smaller ones we saw jumped in the water away from us when we got closer to them.
After seeing the alligators, we headed back to the center so 
we could head back to Charleston. I, as usual, was not paying much attention to where I was walking and would’ve walked right onto/by the snake pictured had my girlfriend not seen it. The snake appears to be a young Eastern Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus piscivorus). It had a pit on its head between the nostril and the eye (lower on the face than both of them) and had a vertical pupil. They typically live in swamps and rice fields which helped in the identification of the snake although it, thankfully, did not get angry enough to open its mouth and flash the bright white, cotton-color.
(James Helton, SC)
No comments:
Post a Comment