Grass  Snake  Facts

8th April 2001    Back to Home Page    Back to Snakes     Search Engines

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How to report a reptile that you find

The graph below shows the weekly numbers of visits to this site by people searching for snakes, adders and grass snakes.   1 represents the first week of year 2000.

The trends may represent sightings of snakes, or merely the tendency of many people to go out less in the winter than in the summer.  The graph shows a steep rise in February 2001, but then came a cold week, and the start of the foot-and-mouth epidemic.  The grass snake page receives more visits than the adder page, although grass snakes are much more rare in England.  To see what happens, watch this space.

Grass snakes need places where they can lie and bask, and cover close by to which they can retreat quickly.  A south facing area backed by cover in the form of rocks, broken stone walls, scrub, etc, is ideal.  They also need warm places, such as heaps of compost or decaying natural vegetation, for their eggs to develop. 

The reduction in the number of compost heaps may have contributed to the decline in the number of grass snakes.

Grass snakes can grow to three feet, or almost a metre, in length.  Their build is different from that of the adders; they are relatively thinner for a given length, and the tail is tapered more gradually.  They lack the pattern on the back.  They have vertical markings on each side, and behind the head are two bright yellow crescents.  The colour can vary from brownish to pale grey.  The eye pupils are almost circular, whereas those of the adder are almost slits, like a cat’s in bright light.

The first two pictures were made using the built-in flash on the camera, which accounts for the unnatural lighting.

Grass snakes are quite gregarious, and will bask together.  They will also bask with adders.  Sometimes three or four snakes will curl up together in a tangled mass.  They seem to have no trouble in working out who is who when they need to move.  Grass snakes can climb high into a hedge to find a good place to bask.

If you disturb a grass snake it can vanish with lightning speed.  You may wait a very long time for it  to re-appear.

If you pick up a grass snake you may get a surprise.  The biggest surprise would be if it were an adder.  Before you pick it up, be sure you can see the yellow behind the head.  Firstly the grass snake may wriggle vigorously, and secondly it may produce a very smelly fluid.  If you haven’t held the snake at arm’s length you may have to wash your clothes.  Grass snakes may also feign dead, with the head at an angle and the mouth wide open.

Best not to pick up a snake at all, as they are easily damaged by pressure.  But you can pick them up by getting a hand underneath.  The main thing is not to squeeze too hard.

Although snakes are robust and flexible, they are not designed to take the compressive forces needed to pick them up by squeezing.

Some of the material in the adders page applies also to grass snakes.

What to do if a grass snake visits your garden

Grass snakes are occasionally seen in gardens, especially gardens with ponds.  Grass snakes prefer frogs and toads to other prey, but they sometimes take newts, very small mammals, and small fish.  As the jaws of most snakes can gape very wide, the prey can be wider than the snake.  But the snake is unlikely to take a fish that is much fatter than a frog.

If a snake has appeared in your garden, there must be  a suitable habitat nearby.  In any case, if you can release it away from a road, and near some cover, it may be able to travel to a suitable place.

If you don’t dislike snakes, and you don’t have creatures in your pond that a snake would eat, it might do no harm to leave it there.  But if it goes to another garden, the owner might be less tolerant, and might want to kill it.

Snakes can live quite a long time without food, and so you can keep on in a suitable container overnight until you are ready to move it.  Being able to live at a slow pace gives snakes an advantage over small mammals such as shrews, which are obliged to dash around and find food at a tremendous rate.  While doing this they are more likely to be seen than a more placid animal.