Northern Water Snake With Prey

      

           I've been hanging out at Raymond Reservation a lot this week, as is shown by the titles of my last two posts. Every time I bike down that rail trail, I find something. The first day it was an american eel carcass and a kingfisher, the second day it was a beaver skull and a coyote. The third day, I almost collided with a bobcat on my bike. Today, I wasn't finding much. My trail camera I had set up on the bobcat's location had zero videos. I walked my usual route down the hill, onto the muddy bank of the dried up pond. I started photographing a green heron when I heard a smacking noise. A Bluegill was trying to escape the jaws of a Northern Water Snake less than three feet away from me. By the time my camera focused on the snake's head, the fish was no longer moving...

I sat down on the same log that takes up half the photo above. My lens was maybe a foot away from the snake's face. It clearly didn't mind that I was so close because it continued to inhale more of the fish... 

.                                ..60 seconds later, only the fish's tail still poked out of it's mouth...

...As soon as it finished, it slowly slipped back into the water, and disappeared. It was clearly full though, because I noticed a little, scaly head sticking out a few seconds later.

 

It's always cool getting to watch a predator-prey interaction like this, especially only from a few feet away.