Reptile

Chequered Keelback

Fowlea piscator

IUCN: Least Concern

Chequered Keelback (Fowlea piscator) photographed by Devendra Bhardwaj — Image: Devendra Bhardwaj · iNaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0 · Jamwa Ramgarh, Vishanpura, Rajasthan · Resized

Scientific name: Fowlea piscator
Family: Colubridae
Group: Reptile
Conservation status: Least Concern

A water snake that hunts fish and frogs.

Spot it Checkered olive-brown pattern.
Home Ponds and paddy fields.
Food web Eats fish and frogs; herons and mongooses eat it.
Why it matters Balances wetland life and feeds larger predators.

Read more: Checkered keelback on Wikipedia

Sources and credits

Records and field notes

RajasthanDevendra Bhardwaj has 1 verified record of this species on iNaturalist in 2019, in Vishanpura.^[20]

Sources

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (species pages linked on each entry) (database). Global conservation status. Every species page was opened.
Devendra Bhardwaj. iNaturalist observations and notes, with place and date (inaturalist.org/people/devendrabhardwaj) (field record). The observer's own dated records and notes, with places. Statements in his notes are his own and were not independently checked by KJVF.
GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF species data (family, order, Hindi names, IUCN category) (database). Open biodiversity data. Used for classification, Hindi common names and the IUCN category where one is given.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (opening lines of each species article, CC BY-SA 4.0). The link on each entry goes to the article (reference). Not peer reviewed. Only the opening description is used, and statements about origin or medicinal use are left out.
Short introductions and key points written with AI help (Google Gemini and Claude) and checked against GBIF where possible (reference). AI-assisted text for general readers. Please check important details before relying on them.

The tag before each record shows the place it was checked for.

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