Hi Marie ... I've been a caregiver for 34 years and will be having a patient in here, one at a time. I get a lot of hospice pts who aren't tracking with concentration so providing them an Eden with lots of birdwatching is a soothing enjoyment for them. There's birdfeeders out every window and bubblers, bird baths, and fountains. Lots of songbirds! Plus we've built bungee cord "gyms" for their pleasure until all these 300+ baby trees get bigger. I bought this house in May 2005. It was rural. Now it's suburban and in 2 years it will be urban with a gigantic shopping center going in a few blocks away with a major transportation hub (car, bus, Amtrak, light rail, multi-use paths). Portland area is experiencing a building and infill frenzy. There's a very good group of nature shops here in the greater Portland metro regions called Backyard Birdshop. They sell anything related to birds and great yard/garden/home high-class stuff. Their seeds are fresh and reasonably priced. After trying everything, our birds have voted for the shelled black oil sunflower pieces and the pacific no waste combo -- sunflower, peanuts, millet, corn, all shelled. The finches love the niger thistle that has its own type of feeder (small holes). Also use lots of suet feeders. Since there's so many feeders around the house the birds don't fight at crowded spots but flit to the next convenient station. The number of birds comes and goes. Right now there's a sharp-shinned hawk, sometimes a cooper hawk, that is haunting the yard so that's cutting the seed expenditure way down since the birds stay away. These hawks eat little birds. All our feeders are made of recycled plastic lumber which looks great, like wood, good color, and never cracks chips fades splinters etc -- makes them very easy to clean. Examples from the web of 2 types we use: We see chickadees, an amazing variety of juncos and sparrows, lots of finches (lesser gold, American gold, house, purple, pine siskin), stellar and scrub blue jays, flocks of flickers, bushtits, varied thrush, downy woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, crows, mourning doves, black-headed grosbeaks, great blue heron, anna + rufous hummingbirds, barn swallows, nuthatches, robins, starlings when they have babies, cedar waxwings, and spotted towhees, The yard is continually fertilized with ample amounts of guano, and we're grateful when it rains.

It looks like a common garter snake to me. There are several varieties. I hope you didn't kill it as they good snakes. Here is a link to enature.com. They have field guides where you can look up almost enything. I have linked to garter snakes. You may find yours there. Sorry it is long, but I narrowed it down to southest, then common garter snake. there are serveral pictures and one of them looks like yours http://enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?source=&parkid=&searchText=garter+snake&allSpecies=y&shapeID=0amp;lshapeID=0amp;curAbbr=&lastView=default&lastGroup=7&lastRegion=&lastFilter=4&lastShapeName=&trackType=&curRegionID=2209&size=&habitat=&fruit=&color=&sortBy=family&curFamilyID=®ionSelect=Southeast®ionZIP=&curGroupID=7&lgfromWhere=&curPageNum=1

Greetings! There are actually three species of veneomous Snakes here in NY State. All are rare, one is very endangered. This wetland Rattlesnake being posted about sounds like the endangered one, the Eastern Massasauga [Sistrurus catenatus]. The Massasauga rattlesnake is the most diminutive of the three venomous snakes found in New York State, the other two are the timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) and the copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix). In the Chippewa language, "massasauga" translates to "great river-mouth" and probably refers to the snake's preference for wet habitats, including riverine bottomlands. The adult Massasauga, also known as the "Swamp Rattler," is a girthy snake with a broad head. It measures 18-40 inches (45-100 cm) in length. Average length is 27.5 inches (70 cm). The body is distinctively marked with a row of large black or dark brown hourglass-shaped markings along the back and three rows of smaller dark spots on each side. The background coloration is gray or brownish-gray. A dark bar with a lighter border extends from the eye to the rear of the jaw. Some adults, however, are all black. This rattlesnake can also be identified by the nine large scales on the crown of the head, similar to most non-venomous snakes. The timber rattlesnake's head is covered with numerous small scales. If you see one, you should revel in your good fortune to find such a rare creature!! Tell me about your sighting if you do find one, I have wanted to photograph one for years...

It looks like one of the several tree vipers in SE Asia of the genus Trimeresurus. I am not familiar with the differnt species and subspecies. It could be a color variant of T. wagleri (Wagler's Pit Viper or Temple Viper).