Snake Cover Boards

Snake Cover Boards

Have you gone out to your wood pile to retrieve a log, and end up disturbing a creature that was using that log as a home? You’re likely not alone. Snakes, like many other animals, tend to use woody debris as shelter. While some are quite put off by the idea of critters living in regularly accessed wood piles, we used it to our advantage.

In order to get an understanding of species richness (what kinds of snakes) and abundance (how many snakes) are here in Litchfield/Morris, we established 30 “snake cover board” piles around the property. The cover boards consist of slab wood, left over from saw mill operations, that were cut to about 2 foot long sections. 

Where can you find these snake cover boards? They have been placed around the edge of the various fields that White Memorial maintains within its wooded property. These fields act as vital habitat for many species, and the snakes are likely to be found there as there is ample sun, food, and shelter.

It may not look like much, but that small brown spot in the grass in the middle of the photo is the pile. It could be easily overlooked if not being actively looked for. 

 Common Garter Snake
Photo: CT DEEP

What species of snake are found in the piles? We regularly encounter the Common Gartersnake (Thmnophis s. sirtalis) and Red-bellied Snake (Storeria o. occipitomaculata).

Red-bellied Snake
Photo: Tom Tyning WesternMassnaturalist.org

Other species that can be observed include, but are not limited to, the Ring-necked snake, Milksnake, and Eastern Rat Snake. 

If you’d like to check a snake cover board out, there is an easily accessed one on the main property of White Memorial. It is between the saw mill and Ongley Pond. It is the one pictured here. Snakes are likely to be found in the warm summer months.

For more information about Connecticut's snakes, see CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Here is a link to their page on Snakes. 

More Snakes Encountered Under Cover Boards

This summer’s second round of checking snake cover board grids yielded great results. At every grid, except two, James Fischer and I found snakes hiding under the piles of wood trying to escape from the hot and humid weather. We encountered Red-bellied snakes at three of the piles, which were not present last time we removed the boards. All the Red-bellied were small in size (about 7 inches), meaning that they were probably males, likely waiting for the larger females to arrive. We also came across many more Garter snakes, especially at the Ongley Pond site, where there was a total of six counted Garter snakes, one juvenile and five adults. We saw only one Ring-necked snake at the Apple Hill Lower Field, which was where we spotted one two weeks ago. At the two grids where we did not have snakes, Wamogo Field and Laurel Hill; we did find a Red-backed vole and a fairly intact snake skeleton approximately 12 inches long.  

Red-bellied snake

Ring-necked snake

Garter snake

Garter snake



Southern Red-backed vole

After checking all of the cover boards and noticing the dramatic increase in snake encounter rate we wondered if this could be due to the recent hot, humid weather, which would cause the snakes to seek cool coverage under the wood piles. Although it could also be due to the time of day we checked the grids. This time we started at 2:00 pm and received our highest snake numbers at the end of the day, around 5:00 pm. In my last blog about snake cover boards, we had the most snakes in the morning and I hypothesized that changing the time of day when the grids were inspected might reveal different abundances of snakes. Today’s result does develop this hypothesis that perhaps mornings and late afternoons are the best times to check cover boards. Since we will be checking the cover boards many more times this summer, we can further test this question.

Monthly Snake Cover-Board Check -- August 2011

Eastern Garter Snake basking on Osmunda Ferns.
photo by James Fischer

(l to r) Madeline Bove, Twan Leenders, and Becca Solnit peeling
through the Snake Cover-Board Pile at Apple Hill Lower Field.
photo by James Fischer

Twan Leenders, CT Audubon Society Conservation Biologist, joined us yesterday to see our Snake Cover-board Monitoring program.  It was great having Twan because he offered us all kinds of advice about how can improve and modify the program.   It also gave us an opportunity to show him unique parts of the property that we conserve.  We encountered 3 species: 8 Eastern Garter Snakes, 3 Northern Redbelly Snake, and 1 Eastern Milk Snake.  We check all of the 12 cover-board piles on the property between 12:30 p.m. through 15:10 p.m. EST.  Madeline Bove, Ryan Gannon, and Becca Solnit were also present, which begins to explain why this session was so efficient, because we had so many hands and eyes present that searching for the snakes.

Monthly Snake Cover-Board Check

On Wednesday June 29 and July 6, Jamie, fellow volunteer Ryan Gannon, and I conducted the monthly survey of the 12 snake cover-boards that are set up around the property. The snake cover-boards are piles of 30 to 40 boards, which are loosely stacked so they are about 6 inches high and 4 feet long. The boards are made of both soft and hard woods, and the variability of these piles creates lots of fun nooks and crannies for snakes to explore as they find different climate conditions to lie in.

On the 29th, we started off checking the cover-boards in Litchfield, including 2 sets along North Shore Road, and piles in fields behind Harris Rd., Windmill Hill, and Cedar Pond. While we did have the opportunity to do lots of good vegetation management, we found no snakes that morning. Perhaps, we hypothesized, snakes aren’t exactly early risers. Maybe it had something to do with the weather conditions—just above 70˚F, 50% cloud cover, and a light breeze from the northwest. Or maybe all of the snakes in Litchfield have decided that Morris is a much nicer town to live in. Whatever the reason, our afternoon survey of the remaining cover-boards along Alain White Road, and Apple and Laurel Hill, was much more successful.

We found our first snakes of the day in the lower field on Apple Hill.  We found 2 juvenile gartersnakes and 1 juvenile ring-neck snake in this pile of cover-boards. The cover-boards in the upper field on Apple Hill yielded 1 adult gartersnake. Our remaining finds that afternoon included 1 adult gartersnake and 1 juvenile northern watersnake in the Alain White Rd. field as well as 2 adult garter snakes back at Ongley Pond.

Ring-neck snake

Northern watersnake

Yesterday, we realized that we had forgotten to check the cover-board pile at the Laurel Hill field, so headed over at about 11am.  This pile turned out to be the big winner with 1 adult gartersnake, 3 adult red-bellied snakes and 1 red eft.

Red-bellied snake

Red-bellied snake's red belly