I'm with the others - love the autumn adders... & good luck on that final trip
Daniel Bohle wrote:Kristian Munkholm wrote:Nice
No adders up here today but 2 grass snakes, 2 sand lizards, 1 slow worm, ...
not bad, never saw a sand lizard that late and slow worms are the first that disapear here.
today I just found one "new" male and the female from the first posting...maybe my next try will be the last one for this year
temps about 14° (at night 3°) and full sunshine.
Juvenile sand lizards are often among the last reptiles I see so these were no surprise to me. Last year when autumn was much cooler I found the last ones October 23. The slow worm however was quite a shock - I hadn't seen one since september. Nevertheless, this was the scene I came across after all of 2 minutes of searching:
Temperatures peaked a little later in the day at 13 degrees, wind was about 5-6 m/s. Conditions were more or less overcast with just a little sun occasionally peaking through where the cloud cover was thinner. There were a couple of holes in the clouds though, so there may have been full sun for short periods of time a little earlier.
I went again Friday. The weather forecast hadn't been too promising but conditions seemed quite good when I left the house. Alas, timing and geography were not on my side so although it's just a short drive when I got to the site it was clearly too cold, gray and windy to expect to find anything. I did find one grass snake in the exact same spot though - dead. I'm guessing it was the same individual and have no clue what might have happened. There were no external injuries and it was clearly well fed. The hibernaculum is a mere 10 meters away. When I picked up the limp snake to examine it closer its tail started twitching from muscle spasms.
For whatever reason even though my books say adders go into hibernation later than grass snakes my last snake of the year is usually a grass snake - seems it will be again this year as the forecast doesn't seem to offer much hope for more reptiles. Conditions seemed perfect Saturday (12 degrees, full sun, very little wind, recent nights well above freezing) but I couldn't find the time
Next year...
by Daniel Bohle » Fri Oct 28, 2011 3:21 pm 
