BiodiversityWorks receives a few black racer reports each year from people who know our concern over this snake’s declining population. The saddest reports are those of road-killed racers. But we have had reports of live sightings this year, too, including ones from Trustees of Reservations staff at Long Point and The Farm Institute. One exciting report this summer was a video of a racer eating a garter snake in someone’s garden!
Ordinarily, the reports and visuals we receive of black racers are of large adults, which are older snakes. We often wonder where the young racers are. Are no young snakes hatching? If so, the future for this reptile on Martha’s Vineyard is grim, despite our best efforts to study and conserve this important species. So we were thrilled by two recent sightings, one coming to us via iNaturalist and the other the fruit of our ongoing monitoring of a road underpass we installed at Long Point to benefit racers and other wildlife vulnerable to road-kill.
First, a hatchling black racer was photographed and reported from the MV Land Bank Aquinnah Moraine property in early September. iNaturalist user bananastasia saw and photographed the snake while walking the property. Then, as BiodiversityWorks staff finished reviewing the backlog of data from our cameras at the snake hibernacula and under-road crossing we installed at Long Point Wildlife Refuge, we observed a second racer hatchling that traversed the under-road crossing multiple times! It was thrilling to see that there are some youngsters out there!
Black racer snakes are patterned as juveniles, which helps camouflage them in their environment at this vulnerable stage of life, and they gradually transition to the solid black color of adults when they are around 2 years old. During that transition stage, the pattern is barely visible. This suggest that both of these sightings were of hatchlings from this year. Female racers lay 8-20 eggs in rotting logs or other damp, warm, concealed locations in June and July. The young emerge in August or September and are about 9-12 inches long. Thus, the young racers documented this year in late August/early September matches the timeline when we would start seeing young racers.
Since April 2023 we have been using automatic game cameras to monitor the two hibernacula and the under road-crossing we installed at Long Point. These features were installed largely with black racers in mind, to help reduce road mortality for racers and to test how and if they would work before placing them in other locations on the island. In the last two seasons of monitoring, we have seen large racers using the crossing and the hibernacula sites. We have also documented other snakes using the crossing, including smooth green, garter, and ribbon snakes. This was our first observation of a hatchling racer using the crossing. A young racer made three different crossings within a week. Even though the image is blurry, you can still see the dark striped pattern; there is no other snake it could be mistaken for here on the island. While it was not observed at the hibernacula nearby, we do hope it checked it out and plans to spend the winter there. Either way, we wish these hatchlings well and hope they make it to adulthood. Their occurrence tells us male and female racers are surviving in the Long Point and Aquinnah areas of the island, and that females are reproducing successfully. That is some very happy newsssss!
