Here are some pics from the last three days of our trip, and the rest of the story....
Day four saw us start at Zablijak in the north of Montenegro, on the edge of the Durmitor National Park. Florian had a site for our fourth target, mososrensis, so we headed there straight after breakfast while the sun was still on the vertical rock face.
Like a dream, the first lizard was spotted within five minutes, and gave us lovely views from the roadside at eye level and below. It was joined by another, juvenile, which did the same. Paul was absolutely made up, and threatened to go home now that he had completed his list of wants! Nobody argued, but I did manage to convince him not to walk home!
- Dinalacerta mosorensis - another near-endemic. Subtle, but very attractive
Next, the herpers split from the birders, and us feathery people went up to a high point in the park to look for high altitude birds. Apart from a pair of Alpine chough feeding young in a cave, it was pretty quiet. I also managed to find a gravid female sand lizard of the subspecies bosnica, and even caught it myself! It wasn't moving very quickly though!
- Sand lizard - bosnica.
The others were seeing more of the same further back down the road, but as we got close to them Paul Radio'd us to say we should come quickly becasue they had found something rather interesting.... a hot and dehydrating walk across rocks later and a stunningly beautiful jet black Vipera berus bosniensis was displaying itself very nicely on a small rock. For me, the most beautiful snake of the trip. The harsh light and dark colour of the snake made it very difficult to get a decent picture though.
- Stunning!
At this same spot was a rather surprising single plant of Vanilla orchid - Gymnadenia rehllicani. Not only at quite a low altitude, but very early - I'd normally expect this to be in flower in July.
Next we did a bit of tourism, visiting the beautiful Crna jezero (Black Lake). Very touristy, and a chance for Merlin to have a swim, but not really much in the way of wildlife. This preceeded a visit to the main tourist attraction of the area - the famous bridge over the Tara Canyon - the second deepest canyon in the world - but not where the bridge crosses it!
- Crna jezero
- The famous bridge over Tara Canyon
A nice surprise find here was a smooth snake, next to the road by the tourist stalls with their tacky trinkets and aggressive sales women. For me, a fresh-faced herper trainee, this was a new species!
- Nice. Smooth snake
Anyway, we had done enough time-wasting and had a 2-3 hour journey ahead of us to the Lovcen NP, so headed back the way we came, but stopped to look at a field of Orchids near Zablijak. Mistake - we spent over an hour here, and found seven different species. A really nice site.
- Field of Orchids, mainly Dactylorhiza majalis
- Neotinea tridentata. Pretty.
Over the road, a nice surprise came in the form of a Balkan stream frog hopping about in the grass - a species we had missed last year.
Our journey south was on the best road of the trip, but still long and arduous after another busy, hot day with only crisps, sweets, ice cream and water for sustenance. It was dark when we arrived finally in Cetinje, and found one of the two Hotels in the town, to find the water was off so no shower tonight boys and girls! We consoled ourselves with pizza and beer, after which sleep came quickly and without effort.
The last full day of the trip was planned to suit everyone. We left the Hotel and had to stop first to admire the sheer quality of parking in the town....
- Excellent skill is required to park like this. The Hotel gardener trying to be inconspicuous
Herpers went to a little place near Cetninje, while us birders decided on a boat trip into Lake Skadar. Earlier in the week their place had produced Green Bombina's and a Leopard snake. Today the former were present, but the latter not.
- Crnojevica
For us birders, the boat trip was a dream - relaxing and in the shade, with many waterbirds close to the boat - mainly herons and egrets, plus grebes and terns. Pygmy cormorants, a bird the Lake is famous for, were common. A lesser grey shrike was a nice surprise, and we also saw several family parties of the beautiful Golden oriole flying across in front of the boat. The scenery was absolutely stunning too.
- A snake-necked purple heron
- Pygmy cormorant, a speciality of the area
- Squacco heron.
We re-joined the very hot and sweaty herpers for a nice fish soup by the river in Crnojevica before heading west into the Durmitor park. Another stop for a roadside Orchid meant a search of the verges and fields next to the road, and we found twelve species of Orchid in total. The best Orchid quote of the trip came from Florian, who had found an unknown species, and shouted me. I asked what it looked like. He shouted back "It loks like sh*t and smells like a fart, it must be something good!". It was a Bird's nest orchid!
In addition, Military, Three-toothed, Burnt & Bug orchids, and lots of large white helleborine and a fantastic Red helleborine. A truly amazing site, even for those who didn't count Orchids as their primary interest.
- Military Orchid
- Red helleborine. About as Red as a Green toad is green!
- Bug Orchid - a new species for Paul.
We headed onwards to meet a local friend of Florians, Nikola. Apparently he was the man to fix my Rock partridge problem. A lot of people had told me that in the past, and everyone had a story about seeing them in large numbers. So far, though, after at least eight attempts, I had yet to believe them.
We followed Nikola's directions to a Rocky hillside which looked good - but then again so did every other place I'd ben to! We got out of the car in the blazing heat. Within two minutes we heard a male Rock partridge calling from somewhere up the hillside, invisible to our binoculars and my scope.
Now I was very excited! There was only one thing for it - climb! Some stayed at the bottom to recce from a distance, Paul and I climbed, while Florian and Nikola did the same to try and head the bird off from a different direction. It was calling like crazy constantly, but remained completely invisible. Paul graciously carried my scope and tripod as I danced upwards at speed, the noise getting closer and closer, the bird not getting any more visible....
We stopped near to where the bird was calling and caught our breath. It was really hot. Too many bushes in the way, it was so close.
Then it broke from cover and flew right past us and sailed across the hillside for all to see!!!! F & N had seemingly flushed it by accident.
A real celebration moment. I nearly gave Paul a big hug, but didn't want him to drop my scope on the rocks - or get the wrong impression....we had a group hug instead!
Unfortunately because I wanted to spend time looking at the bird, I did not try to get a photo. But take it from me, it was a good chicken!!
Back at the bottom I relocated it singing from a rock, so enjoyed distance scope views of the bird perched. Yeehaaaa!!! I rashly promised to buy everyone a beer later. Luckily it was only €1 a bottle....I'm English you know.
- Crazy Beetle at the Rock partridge site
- beetle-15jun12.jpg (90.94 KiB) Viewed 2310 times
- The people that introduced me to my nemesis
The meal was extra special in Cetinje that night, and I think England won a football game apparently. No water in the Hotel until we got back after the meal though!!!
The final day we split from our continental colleagues, as we headed back to our Rock partridge site, since one of our group had missed the bird the night before. No luck thi stime. We tried a second site and got a few dark D oxycephala showing themselves very well, along with some skittish Eastern green lizards.
- Eastern Green Lizard
We then had to start working our way back to Dubrovnik, which was a great drive down the hairpin bends overlooking Katar bay, passing a large flock of Alpine Choughs over the seacliffs.
We stopped at some marshes to look for Dragonflies but failed to see anything new, then had to battle our way through the slow coastal traffic to Dubrovnik Airport, where we had a smooth passage back to the UK.
A fantastic trip. Great scnery, wildlife, weather, and company. The food was cheap and overall pretty good.
Even Merlin enjoyed himself, though he had to protect himself from the heat
I will post a species list for everything we saw once it is fully prepared. Still a few Butterfly photos to go through before I've identified everything!!!
Happy herping!
Sean
Nothing about the orchids??? 