Herptiles of the north

Norway, Sweden, Finland, Baltic Republics

Re: Herptiles of the north

Postby Martti Niskanen » Wed Jun 22, 2011 10:17 am

Cheers for the report.
Definitely a privilege to visit that site far away from everything and where you wouldn't really expect to see adders. I've visited it a couple of times while sampling Zootoca populations and recognise the locations in the photos. The adders are huge and the largest I saw was 86cm and 260g. I really like how some have a very wide zigzag pattern.

Cheers

Martti
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Re: Herptiles of the north

Postby Jimmy Lundqvist » Thu Jun 23, 2011 9:06 am

Hello Martti, I think you met some people on the last expedition in 2005 or 2006?
The mentioned they met you when looking for Zootoca.

86 cm is huge, was that a female?
Maybe its a bit hasty to conclude that there arent any 1m giants.... After all we only had about two and a half days with good conditions and "only" found about 20 snakes.

regards

Jimmy
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Re: Herptiles of the north

Postby Borji Heras » Thu Jun 23, 2011 1:01 pm

20 adders in 2 days ? that´s really amazing , as they have less natural predators , they behave like other adders when they see people, or you can get closer ?
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Re: Herptiles of the north

Postby Jimmy Lundqvist » Sat Jun 25, 2011 9:58 pm

They often bask in the open, probably because lack of many predators, so sometimes its possible to get close. And due to colder climate maybe they are forced to expose themselves to the sun, instead of basking under vegetation. We saw some snakes with injured tails, and according to Stefan the odd fox, marten or eagle maybe can take a snake for prey, but many snakeeating predators for example buzzard is absent this far up north.
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Re: Herptiles of the north

Postby Joel Rahkonen » Mon Jul 25, 2011 8:32 am

Great report!
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