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It´s getting colder and colder every day, this morning at 7.00 h we had 5 Degrees.
When I left home at 9.30 h Temperature was 9 Degrees.
When I arrived at my best berus place at 10.30 h the temperature was 11 Degrees.
The weather was closer to rain than to sunshine and a cold wind was blowing.
A few Farmer were cutting grass around, also not the best thing to find snakes.
I walked about a half hour and decided to leave the area, because it was to cold.


Suddenly the wind stop and the sun came out.
I walked to another part of the area and found in 10 Minutes 3 Viperas, one normal and two black-browns!




Do you find it?









After pictured them, the sun disappeared. I walked one hour more but found nothing.

A left the place and drove to one of my best Coronella Places, Temperature 13 Degrees, less sun.
I found only 1 Natrix natrix and 1 Lacerta agilis.

I left that area to my best Natrix place, Temperature still 13 Degrees. I found only one adult and 4 of last year.



Two juvenils


There is a small area were also Berus occurs, I found in the past always females there, from one till three. But today not one of them was there.
I ask my self in the past, which Gangster make the ladies fat there, because I never saw a male.
But today I saw him the first time.



I also found 2 Lacerta agilis and 2 Zootoca vivipara (to fast to picture).





Not many herps for a trip like this, the herpseason is on the finish line.
Maybe 3 or 4 Weeks and it`s over.

Today I was back at the berus place. When I arrived the Temperature was 16 Degrees, cloudy, no sun, few raindrops from time to time.
After a while I found a nice black one.





After the shooting the sun came out and I found a few more.





In situ!!!





Female with nice markings







All in all I found six, two “normal” and four “Black”.
Two of the six were last year’s babies.

very nice findings!

Great Jürgen!
If you continue like that, you will still find Viperas at Christmas!

Regards
Peter

Peter Oefinger wrote:If you continue like that, you will still find Viperas at Christmas!

It`s not up to me!!
This week should be very good to find more, but next week ...
and than I have to start the countdonwn again!

Nice vipers Jurgen!! Your German trips seem more sucessful than my Madrid trips Black berus are really nice!

Beautiful specimens!

Here we are still swimming in the sea

Tuesday we had rain, but the Temperatures were not bad for October, during the day 14 Degrees and at night 7 Degrees.
I decided to visit de berus-place on Wednesday again. I left work at noon and arrived at 13 h.
It was sunny with a few clouds. Temperatures 18 Degrees, looks like a perfect Herp-Day.
But I found nothing!
No Natrix, No Berus, No Zootoca, No Pelophylax.
End is near!!!!

Yes, I had the same experience. Numbers went down extrem fast over the last days, while the weather was still perfect.
Yesterday I could not find a lot of the animals that I still saw on mandy, sunbathing around their hibernaculum.
But there are still some out, lets see how long ...

... & up here in Denmark we had an overcast and damp but quite mild day today. I had a job interview in a suburb north of Copenhagen right on the edge of a forest with a healthy Natrix population so though I didn't have much time I couldn't helping racing by the best spot for a quick glance on the way home. In 10 minutes of searching I found one grass snake. I rarely bother to catch snakes, usually only taking in situ shots and letting them go unphotographed if conditions don't really allow for this. This time, however, I wanted to document what could be the last snake of the season, and since all that was visible was a little bit of its tail protruding from underneath a bed of wilted ferns I pretty much had to gently drag it out and try to pose it. When I got it out I discovered it was in the blue. I presume it will go into hibernation as soon as it has shed. Unfortunately I couldn't really get it to calm down as it just kept trying to escape from underneath my backpack - the only cover I had at hand as I didn't really want my work jacket that would require dry cleaning to get musked. Eventually as I just gave up and set about to release it of course it went dead... At least I got one semi decent shot though cleaning it first admittedly would have helped:



Habitat:



If the weather makes the endeavour realistic I hope to find the time for a quick jaunt for a couple of adders to close out the season some time next week. Otherwise we are indeed already back to the dreaded countdown up here