Stephens banded snake

A beautiful sub-adult Stephens banded snake, Hoplocephalus stephensi photographed in suburbia, city of Lake Macquarie, NSW Australia.  Photo copyright © Amanda Ayre Photography.   

I have been completely engrossed by the natural world for my entire life.  Much to my mother's horror, herpetology has been one of my first loves.

I found this beautiful young Stephens banded snake (Hoplocephalus stephensi) crossing a road last autumn.  Unfortunately there is nothing to give you a sense of scale in the image, but the snake was a sub-adult, not even two feet long.  

This species is regarded as "vulnerable" in NSW partly because of the environment in which they are usually found.  They are a fascinating animal; a dangerously venomous species of elapid snake that lives, hunts and breeds in trees.  They are one of the few elapid snakes in Australia that have "keeled" ventral scales; a clear adaptation for a life spent climbing in trees.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this species is much more abundant than currently thought.  I have spent a lot of time working in the field with endangered amphibians and frequently encountered this snake in some very unusual environments.  There are certain years in the Hunter Valley when we have what can best be described as breeding "explosions" for the local amphibians.  The thing is that these events are not predictable, and do not happen every year.  These pluvial events happen in late spring and early summer.

We have a species of endangered frog in the Hunter valley called the Green-thighed frog, Litoria brevipalmata.  This animal is similar to the Stephens banded snake in that they are normally extremely hard to detect in the wild.  Most of the time it is thought (science doesn't know the most basic details about this animal yet) that they live in the tops of trees and are only found on the ground during these special breeding "explosion" events - which are associated with pluvial periods.  We will have torrential rain that continues almost unbroken for three or four days.  Grasslands on the edge of rainforest and wet sclerophyll forest will flood.  Frogs of nearly all species will be breeding throughout the landscape.  The Green-thighed frog will breed frenetically and en-masse, and just as suddenly disappear again.  You have to be in these temporarily inundated areas during these three or four days of rain or you will miss them.  You'd never have a clue they were there.

It is during these periods that I routinely find Stephens banded snakes on the ground, and in what is considered unusual places for the species such as melaleuca swamps.  The little fellow pictured above was found in just such a spot right in the middle of suburbia in the City of Lake Macquarie.  I have found numerous specimens of this species at this location, so it's not an escapee or accidentally transported animal.

To me, this is more anecdotal evidence that the species is just like the Green-thighed frog; it is cryptic and likely to be far more widely distributed than currently thought.  It is rarely encountered because it doesn't need to come down to the ground very often.  Because of the stripes, most locals would think this was definitely a "Tiger snake".