Hi folks,
last week I decided to go to the south of Hessen and try to find some Zamenis longissimus, a species and location that I hadn’t visited for some years now.
Then today I stuffed my kids and my camera in the car and arrived at the location at around 1030. For about an hour we kept looking for snakes but found ‚hundreds‘ of Anguis fragilis. I have never seen them in such masses. It was good to see that the habitat obviously is being taken care of and monitored - makes me hope that the population is big and strong and thus will survive and even expand.
We then changed locations and were successful within minutes to discover the first Zamenis - out in the low vegetation and not hidden underneath tarps or sheets of steel. That was a first time for me - never seen them crawling around. At first I thought it was a black rubber tube for bicycles but then it startet to move...
All in all I saw 2,3,1. The juvenile seems to be born last year - please excuse the in hand picture of it. If it’s not ok, I will remove it immediately. The little one was impossible to photograph on the ground.
Pictures to follow in a few minutes.