fieldherping.eu

Hi,
just some photos form Prague well known dice snake habitat, I visited their habitat for three days to see them leaving their hibernaculum. All photos are in-situ from the end of April.

First day I spotted just two snakes. They were basking even tepmperatures did not exceeded 10° C.




Next two days they started to gather in higher numbers and it was fun to watch thir different nature and style of basking.








weird looking twig

and finally some fearless baskers












I wanted to take picture of some huge bunches of them, but temperatures dropped again and I had to wait... More photos you can find on my flickr account)

Here are some side products form same spot:

Green lizards




Courtship video

Grass snakes



And Slow worms...

Wonderful insitu pics! I really like the climbing N. tesselatta!

cheers Kai

Few days ago I was at 2-day trip in Prague.
In our way to Prague we took a break in Polish mountains and I found juvenile alpine newt in coniferous forest- when I was looking for adders. Nearby I tried to find salamanders under logs but it was coniferous forest as well and I failed.
I was looking for salamanders in wildlife reserve in Prague but found only dead slow worm and a pond with many B. bufo tadpoles.






Place where I found the dead slow worm.


I also visited the city's zoo to see giant salamanders but I was unable to take any photo of them as I was told not to take photos because the salamanders are very sensitive to infrared that cameras produce . But there was a dice snake in one of outdoors exhibitions- the snake was not supposed to be part of the exhibition but it came there and felt good.




I was also trying to find green lizards in wild and I succeeded. This is their habitat within grounds of the zoo.


beautiful male and a beautiful female

Great stuff Tomas! I wonder what's the benefit of this climbing and basking in low vegetation? The plants have no leaves yet so it doesn't seem to provide access to more sun light and the snakes seem quite exposed...

Ilian Velikov wrote:Great stuff Tomas! I wonder what's the benefit of this climbing and basking in low vegetation? The plants have no leaves yet so it doesn't seem to provide access to more sun light and the snakes seem quite exposed...

The ground is probably (almost surely) more humid and cooler, at least for a great amount of the surface, and it is clear that one meter above ground there is less shadow and more direct sunlight, even in absence of leaves.

Ruggero Morimando wrote:The ground is probably (almost surely) more humid and cooler, at least for a great amount of the surface, and it is clear that one meter above ground there is less shadow and more direct sunlight, even in absence of leaves.

This makes sense especially the humidity and the resulting lower temperatures particularly in early spring.

Ilian Velikov wrote:

Ruggero Morimando wrote:The ground is probably (almost surely) more humid and cooler, at least for a great amount of the surface, and it is clear that one meter above ground there is less shadow and more direct sunlight, even in absence of leaves.

This makes sense especially the humidity and the resulting lower temperatures particularly in early spring.

As Ruggero said, I also guess they seeking spots with the highest temperature, the other benefit is they can quickly "fall" down under the vegetation and disapear in case of danger.
BTW, the post is one year old, spring was much cooler and slower than this year...

@Michal - nice to see you find something, pitty you did not try to leave zoo and check rocky bank of Vltava river