salamander day

[Wolfram Schurig]

Dear herpers!

This friday I only had few hours in the morning for a trip. Since it had been raining strongly during the late night and early morning and temperature declined significantly I decided to drive up in the mountains looking for salamandra atra in activity. Maybe a good opportunity for some in-situ-shots of these funny black guys. The place is in a very narrow valley on about 1000m. As one can see in the pics the day was still very cloudy. Only few sun beams breaking through in the late morning.

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First I arrived at a slope that is full of sources ending up in a series of small pools. I could find tadpoles of Bufo bufo and Rana temporaria and many froglets. Also some larvae of Mesotriton alpestris (only small ones).

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The next place was a river bed with several pools which did not have any vegetation apart from green carpets of algae. In these pools there were only tadpoles of common frogs and hundrets of froglets and larvae of alpine newts – some of them were quiet big – I suppose that they maybe have hibernated as larvae. Also a freshly metamorphosised newt was quiet big (56mm).

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Near this fall I found several Salamadra atra (5 in total – all in activity!)

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Back at the river bed I could find several about one year old equally sized Rana temporaria - accumulated at the same place (why?) and Lacerta agilis close to the base of the river embankment. Under piles of twigs I could see few Zootoca vivipara disappearing. I could take a phoptograph of one completely patternless male – perhaps the most amazing find of the trip.

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Nice herping to all of you!

Wolfram

[Jürgen Gebhart]

Good looking place!
Isn`t it funny to picture the running salamanders???
Have you also salamandra salamandra in this area?
The unicolor vivpara is a nice found, never saw this before. Years ago I found two blacks, but not more again!

[Ilian Velikov]

Yes,very beautiful place and very nice amphibian day you've had! And you illustrated it very well with this great photos!

[Wolfram Schurig]

Jürgen, Ilian!

Thankyou for your replies!

Unfortunately we don't have S. salamandra in the very west of Austria at all - although they are a few kilometers across the swiss and bavarian border. In fact there is no reasonable explanation for that, all the more since there are no natural barriers (at least to bavaria). Only one single S.s. terrestris has been reported in 1984- never before, nor later.
I'm still wondering about that unicolor Zootoca. I knew som black ones from photographs. this one rather looks amelanotic, so one could rather expect patternless vent - but it is spotted on orange ground like in normal males! See:

IMG_2661-bauch zootoca.jpg (87.29 KiB) Viewed 3592 times

Do you remeber the vents of your black viviparas?

greetings!

Wolfram

[Jürgen Gebhart]

Not my pic, it was made by Jürgen Zerbe, but my thumb!

Zootoca_vivipara2.jpg (51.62 KiB) Viewed 3577 times