Cacophis squamulosus

My wife found this snake under a house brick while gardening in the back yard.  My 5 year old daughter identified it as a white crowned snake after reading a snake book that our neighbors had given her a few weeks earlier  She was pretty damn close! After more consultation with the book we were confident this is actually a golden crowned snake. The crown marking on it’s head is quite distinctive, unlike the white crowned snake the golden crowned’s crown has a gap at the back of the head near the neck. It’s quite small, it would have been about 30cm long and about 1cm thick in the body just behind the head. It hung around for a few minutes after it was disturbed then calmly slithered away to hide under a nearby wood pile. We don’t often see snakes near the house, we were happy to have seen it, and it was great to be able to identify it too.

Jess, Will and I went on another trip to the wildflower gardens. Kelly stayed at home with Tom to rest and recover from a cold. The rest of us had the worst of it yesterday.

We went in via the playground then on to explore the Mueller track for the first time. It was the first hot day of the season, was meant to be 28 and it did feel like it. Only a few meters out of the carpark we came across a large red bellied black snake by the side of the track enjoying the heat. We got a good close look, it didn’t seem too worried by us.