UNKNOWN GARTER , still need help , better photos inside

[ClosedCasket88]

finally a digital camera might help . since ive gotten this guy hes been eatin alot n putting on the weight he should already of been at when i got him . hes starting to get more blueish/white hue coloring come in were the 2 side stripes are missing or lacking color in . when i baught him he was jet black with just one top stripe
hes starting to look like a florida blue or something perhaps ? not sure can anyone help






any help would be greatly appreciated, hes a beautiful little guy , he was in with a tank of water snakes at the pet shop n they gave em to me becuase possibilities of being a native species, but i ruled that out , def not an eastern sirtalis
thanx

[GarterGuy]

Wow, I don't know??? Have you done any scale counts on him/her yet? It's kind of hard to tell from the pics.....too bad I didn't get to see it at the last Hamburg. Definitely agree, doesn't look like any T.s.sirtalis I've ever seen. Very pretty snake what ever it is!
Roy

[hjelte]

Doesn´t that yellow line on its back kind of resemble T.Atratus? Maybe somekind of hybrid?

[Stefan-A]

Looks a bit like one anery radix I saw on another forum. Frankly, this is really getting interesting.

edit: lol, it was hjelte's radix I was thinking of. Small world. Anway, there is some resemblance and some differences.

[snakeman]

Probally a northwestern.There is a guy that vends there all the time.I have seen him there a few times with northwesterns.

[Daniel]

For me this looks pretty like a Thamnophis ordinoides or northwestern garter snake, like snakeman says.

Best wishes,

Daniel

[ssssnakeluvr]

By looking at the small spots along the stripes and having had one that looks just like that, I 'd say it's a northwestern garter, thamnophis ordinoides.

[ClosedCasket88]

i dont know , soemthing is stil telling me its not a northwestern , it has alota blue . well when he gets bigger im sure ill be able to pin point it but this is realy hard, i know my stuff to a pretty good level and somethings just still tellin me its nto a northwestern , maybee i dont want it to be , i dont know , he just shed today , woooohoo . can any one help me out on this PLEASE , the only thing in tact and that would work good is his bottom jaw , his lower labials and chin shields are in good shape and will work good for identification .

can anyone get me scale counts on some northwesterns n maybee a southern blue and a santa cruz ?

[jewel-dragons]

atratus or an hybrid of it......

[GarterGuy]

Here's a good link that has scale counts for Common garters (T.sirtalis), SantaCruz garters (T.a.atratus) and Northwestern garters (T.ordiniodes).
(Key to California Gartersnakes).
Oh, and T.ordinoides can actually have lots of blue in them. All the "Blue Pugets" that we got from "Bob" were actually T.ordinoides, so blue is definitely in their colour pallet.