I had been picking off butterfly eggs from my cabbage leaves in the garden, started walking back towards the house - glanced towards the pond on my way past & did a double take.....there was a snake hanging over the edge into the water!

Seeing as this is England, this is not a normal sight for me. The last time I saw a snake of any sort in the wild was 25+ years ago when I was a small lad. In my youth I have dim recollection of seeing a slow worm in the garden when I was about 5 & I saw an Adder on dartmoor laying eggs when I was about 8 or so....so this was a bit special.

My first reaction was to run inside & grab my camera - then started clicking away. At this point the snake was happily lying around in the pond. Later my better half came in from work & decided that perhaps the pond wasn't the best location for it. We thought that it might be better to liberate it from the pond & move it onto a more suitable location where it wouldn't destroy the wildlife in our garden.

Before moving it on however, I managed to fire off a few shots of the snake out in the open - this one was the pick of the crop, taken with my Canon 450d, Tamron 70-300mm lens & a +1 closeup filter. Enjoy.