Common Bronzeback Tree Snake

The common bronzeback, also known as Daudin's bronzeback, is a long, slender, harmless tree snake with a pointed head. A bronze-coloured stripe runs down the length of its back, and the rest of the upper body is a fairly uniform ruddy brown that makes it very hard to see among leaves and twigs. It is not venomous and poses no danger to people. (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is active by day and lives entirely in trees and shrubs, in forest types from dry deciduous to semi-evergreen, and it also turns up in urban gardens and parks. It hunts geckos, garden lizards, frogs and small birds among the branches. Females lay 6 to 8 eggs in April, in tree hollows or rotting vegetation. Across its range it is found in Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh and Nepal, with less certain records from Myanmar, Bhutan and Pakistan (Wikipedia, general species account).

The bronzeback is widespread in India: the Reptile Database lists records from the far south in Tamil Nadu and Kerala through Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Telangana and Odisha to Punjab, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir and Tripura in the northeast, including a record near Lonavla in the Western Ghats (Reptile Database, via Catalogue of Life). Its ability to live in gardens and parks as well as forest means it can turn up in towns (Wikipedia, general species account).