Last week as we went to put the trash and recycle out by the street, my husband found a small snake outside the front steps. It was pencil thin and perhaps 15 inches long. The sun was already past the hill, so in the poor light it looked mostly like a plain gray color with not much in the way of markings. Of course, we had to get a camera to take photos of this visitor, since we did not recognize him. Apparently that was a bit threatening from the snake’s perspective and he responded by coiling his tail into a cone and pointing the underside at us. That was how we found out that the bottom of the snake was a dark orange red color and finally noticed that there was a band of the same color around his body behind his head. So we were then able to identify this one as Diadophis punctatus, the ring necked snake.
You can find more information about this species at http://www.californiaherps.com/snakes/pages/d.p.pulchellus.html