Slithering Snakes- Mom, Don't Read This #2

I enjoy reptiles.  If I wasn't planning a career in botany already, I would have gone into studying herptiles (reptiles and amphibians).  When I was three years old, I had an Australian accent because I watched Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter so much. I still love herps. The other day, in fact, I caught a toad just outside the door of a church building and brought it to a bible study inside the building.  (I returned him outside within a few minutes.)

Here are some of my favorite snakes I have seen in the wild:

Storea dekayi:  Dekay's brown snake is a small snake found commonly in forests throughout the Eastern U.S.   I have found it both in Illinois and in Georgia.

Illinois^^^

 Georgia^^^

Nerodia siphedon: Above is possibly the most common snake in Illinois, the northern water snake. It's a toss up between northern water snakes and common garter snakes.  Garter snakes have a tendency to be found in urban habitats more commonly, so it is likely that they are more common.  Here is an unknown species (Thamnophis spp.) :

I happen to have a den of garter snakes in a location not far from my house, and a second site five minutes away which contains a different species.  Neither one is known, although the one in the net below is about twice the width and length of the one above:

The author of this blog was promptly surprised when the snake pictured above decided to exit the net.  That is a post for another time.

Ophidophobia sufferers, you should not be reading this far.  The rest of you can try and figure out what ophidophobia is*.  I have mild anatidaephobia, and I'll let the smartest people figure out what that is. I know somebody is googling it.  Leave what you find out in the comments section.  It's a good time to talk about phobias, as the following image may make you scream.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.  More snakes, in other words.  I need your help, however, with some of these.  I have no clue what the following species is, for instance.  It was found in the fall in far southern Illinois (Garden of the Gods) and was initially assumed to be a ring-necked snake.   However, a ring-necked snake found nearby is pictured afterwards.

The following is a ring-necked snake, Diadophis punctatus.  The above is unknown, but it was taken only a few hundred feet from the snake below, so it could be a strange ring-necked snake color morph.  I cannot find a similar species online, unfortunately.

The following snake has stumped me for years.  This photo was taken about nine years ago, when I was a wee lad and only half as crazy as I am today:

I have assumed this is a racer, but the marbling on the sides makes me uncertain of the identification.  It was found in Peoria County in April in lightly wooded terrain with some development and a few water sources.  Can anyone confirm that this is in fact a black or blue racer?  That would help a lot.  Let me know what you thought of these snakes. This is only a quarter of the wild snakes I have have seen, as over half the time a camera is unavailable and/or the snakes escape quickly away before I can even get out a camera.  Anyway, good night/morning/afternoon/Friday to everyone.  

*Hopefully I'm not scaring too many of you away today. Roughly one-third of all human beings on the planet are at least slightly afraid of snakes, and fear of snakes, aka ophidophobia, is the most common phobia statistically in the world.