The variety of colour and pattern of the Northern Redbelly Snake is complicated. An individual can be olive-brown, tan-brown, chestnut-brown, grey-brown, grey or even black and the back and sides. Look closely - the colour is usually made of three subtle shades that form a striped pattern.How big do they get? We measured some Northern Redbellies from Nova Scotia:
Newborn babies (47 measured) 7.6 - 11 cm Redbelly Snakes range from Nova Scotia to Saskatchewan, south to Florida and Texas. In Nova Scotia, they are widespread on the mainland and Cape Breton Island.
Adult males (78 measured) 20 - 30 cm
Adult females (113 measured) 19 - 31 cm Earliest record for seeing one out of hibernation in spring: April 13, 1980, New Ross, Lunenburg County. This is also the earliest record for any spring snake in Nova Scotia.
Latest record for seeing one in the fall: October 27, in 1931.
These are night-time creatures. One misty morning in the pre-dawn darkness of August, 1973, John Gilhen saw 47 Redbelly snakes along 30 km of highway in Queens County. 42 of them had been squashed by cars.
They are live-bearers; females bear from 3 to 12 young during August and the first half of September.
Redbelly Snakes chow down on slugs, mostly. This is really valuable to blueberry farmers, because slugs damage blueberries. But burning over blueberry fields, which is common in Nova Scotia as a quick pruning method, probably kills any snakes in the fields.