This is a great resource (besides Mike) for identifying odd things slithering in one's garden. We had a new one yesterday and I found it here easily - they have great photos. Always like to ID them, so there are no worries about what we're sharing our property with. My DH is from England, where they don't have many snakes, so he always calls me when he sees one!

http://www.californiaherps.com...

This time it was a Red Racer...very pretty and he lived up to his speedy name.

That's a cool site...thanks. I do hope that all of those guys don't show up at my place, though....eewww.

ALL of them? I should hope not! I don't mind a few, but I do worry about the nesting birds and frogs, etc.

I have one (or more of the same) that's shows up here periodically and never looks exactly like any pics I see, though it must be just a change in age or lighting, or whatever. When I first started seeing him / her, I thought Rosy Boa just because of the coloring, but it's not one of those, so must be one of the little red snakes....

Well, I wrote to the author of the web site about this one, as I haven't been able to find it. Very pretty - but he was menacing some nesting wrens, which is how I found him, as the darned birds would not shut up. He was completely hidden in a large Ceanothus bush, wound in an around.

That page gave me the hee bee gee bees! Too many snakes all in one place!

The rattlesnakes bother me, the rest not so much. Some of them are pretty weird looking, though.
Found out the one above is a Striped Racer (we have lots of racers around here, apparently).