Remember the post of my female Northern Pine Snake laying eggs at the beginning of June? Well her eggs started hatching a couple of days ago. This one was the first one out.
Pine Snake eggs usually take about 65 days to hatch, depending on the temperature.
Young pines are completely independent of their parents and can hiss, strike, catch food and constrict right after hatching.
They can be surprisingly big babies, often around 18 inches in length.
Ever since I was a kid and read about an elusive seven-foot white snake with a bold, black pattern which lives underground, I’ve been fascinated with Northern Pine Snakes. I’ve been keeping them for a number of years. Here is one of my females laying eggs today. She lined the first half-dozen up neatly in a row.
The secretive nature of pine snakes makes them difficult to find in the wild. They spend much of their time in the subterranean tunnels of pocket gophers, their favorite food item. Occasionally a Northern Pine will enter an animal burrow, consume the inhabitants, and then take possession of the burrow.
Not only do wild Northern Pine Snakes dig nests for egg-laying purposes, but they also practice communal nesting. Multiple pine snakes return to the same site year after year to deposit eggs. A pine snake burrow is truly an impressive sight, with the sand pile excavated by the female sometimes being 2 or 3 feet across.
Northern Pine Snakes prefer to inhabit pine barrens and sand-hill regions throughout their scattered range.