Hobbies And Interests
Trans-Pecos Copperhead
The Trans-Pecos copperhead is a venomous snake found in Texas. It is primarily a terrestrial snake, but it can climb trees and bushes to a height of 4 feet. Its diet includes small mammals, birds and their young as well as other snakes and insects. The baby birds that it feeds on are usually the young of birds that nest on the ground and in smaller, lower bushes and trees. A case was documented where a copperhead was found eating a young swallow, even though the swallow's nest was in an inaccessible location situated in sheer limestone cliffs. Ravens had raided the nest and dropped the baby bird from a height high enough to kill it, and the opportunistic copperhead had seized the fallen baby bird.
Black Rat Snake
The black rat snake has a thin, powerful body and a head that is shaped like a wedge. It is entirely black save for a chin that is white. Newly hatched rat snakes are pale grey with black blotches and are frequently mistaken for copperheads because of the similarity in their skin patterns. As the name implies, rat snakes mostly eat rodents, but they also eat bird eggs and baby birds. The rat snakes method of killing its prey is by slowly squeezing them to death.
Corn Snake
Corn snakes are either brownish-yellow or orange in color and have red splotches with black borders that run down the center of their backs. They have a distinctive checkerboard pattern on their bellies. Corn snakes do not eat every day, but they readily search for prey by climbing trees. This means that baby birds in trees are not safe in the eastern United States and Florida where corn snakes are common. Corn snakes also are constrictors and they first bite their prey to achieve a good grip and then coil themselves around their prey and suffocate them. Sometimes they don't bother with constriction and just swallow their prey live.
Egg-Eating Snakes
There are five species of egg-eating snakes that threaten baby birds before they even have a chance to emerge from their eggs. Members of the genus Dasypeltis feed only on bird eggs. This snake's mouth can open extremely wide to allow it to swallow eggs up to the size of a chicken's egg. Its teeth also are much smaller to allow it to fit the egg into its mouth. The vertebrae in this snake's neck have been adapted so that they can break the eggshell. The egg shell is spat out, while its contents are swallowed and digested.