Baby California Mountain King Snake

While hiking in the mountains above Santa Barbara, California and just within the edge of Los Padres National Forest, we came upon a young California Mountain King Snake. It was curled up in a patch of pine needles and debris and was almost invisible, in spite of it's bright colors. It crossed the trail and went back into the dry grass. If you look at it closely, it is interesting how the color patterns remain essentially confined to individual scales. Unlike bird feather coloring, very little color is shared with adjacent scales. This gives the snake its jagged banding.