A VAMMO lovers' corner

[Berislav Horvatic]

How many times have you observed climbing ammos like those ones? I only observed this one time with an asp viper (Cf viewtopic.php?f=9&t=703)

Personally, only twice. But vammos do it quite often, especially in late summer and early autumn.
There are a lot of pictures documenting this behaviour.

Thanks for these very interesting pics
but

And that's really all of my vammo-in-situ stuff.

is not very positive to my eyes

Don't you worry, I said that I did not really TRY to do it, not that it's so terribly difficult.

And yes, now I remember yet another one from my pre-Mario days:

But the beast did not give me the chance for another shot - it disappeared in the dry-stone wall
(really quickly!), with the loudest hiss I've ever heard from any snake. It was really pissed off by
my intrusion.

[Mladen Zadravec]

Had a lot of opportunities to take in situ ammodytes pics. However, since most of them were at my study site, I usually skipped them, since an in situ pic won't get me closer towards graduation (but a measured snake will). Here's an in situ pic of the very first measured female (13.05.2009, 14:56, a couple of meters from where she was caught & measured at 12:28). Taken with full zoom (6× was the max I had back then, I think), from a couple of meters:

[Mario Schweiger]

Fortunately snakes have the chance to come out of these dangerous traps

Lacerta trilineata dead in tyre. Dalmatia 2010

Mario

[Berislav Horvatic]

Had a lot of opportunities to take in situ ammodytes pics. However, since most of them were at my study site, I usually skipped them, since an in situ pic won't get me closer towards graduation (but a measured snake will).

A lot of opportunities, yes, but UNTESTED opportunities, as you say yourself. Since in most cases you haven't tried,
you actually don't know how you would have fared if you had...

[Mladen Zadravec]

True... but also, on several occasions, I found the ammodytes in a nice position for in situ picture taking, however, when Roman was with me, I called him to come and take the photo, while I stand ready to catch it if it decides to not cooperate. Sometimes it took him up to 1-1.5 minutes to come to us, all the while the ammodytes stayed put.

This little lady was very patient. Approx. 4-5 min elapsed from when I first saw her to when I caught her (the pic was taken shortly after I saw her, from approx. 3-4 m away). In the meantime, I took off my backpack, drank some water, turned on the GPS, and wrote down the data in my notebook. And she did see me- at one point she turned her head towards me and watched what I was doing.

Also wasn't in a hurry to get away... (had to take measurements)

[Berislav Horvatic]

...on several occasions, ...

You know what I mean: In a large number of sightings (100 or so) you attempt an in situ photo on EACH occasion, then
count the percentage of success... I would expect a meagre 5% or so, others disagree, but nobody has ever tried...

[Mladen Zadravec]

Yeah, we're still a long way from that number...

[Bert Vandebosch]

I agree more or less with Michael.
Thinking about all the great pictures of aspis from Stephane, I'm sure he has a 50% change to get descent in-situ pictures.
In my experience they are as "easy" to get in situ shots from as other european vipers.
I don't have special equipment, only a compact camera with 20x optical zoom.
From Montenegro (autumn 2010):
2 animals were only 3 meters apart.
First one only 1 picture

He took off after that.
Second one, I could aproach closer and could make 5 pictures like this and catch it afterwards:

After 10 minutes the first one came back and I could catch it also.
Another big male on a hot day on the same trip.

Have to say that this one just ate a big meal.

Then Bulgaria (spring 2011):
This animal I caught first, took pictures, released it and found it back again at the same place 15 minutes later.
I could aproach it quite close to take these pictures:

The easiest was this one. I drove up to it with my car, had to search my gloves and camera, got out of the car and took this in-situ shot

juvenile (yes it was alive)

On two trips, 12 animals seen, 5 in-situ pics (and I didn't try with the others), only one animal escaped before I could take a picture or grab it (and that was completely my own fault, too much fuzzing about to find my gloves).
Both trips were family vacations, so limited search time.
I hope this lifts up the spirit even more, Stephane! Can't wait to see your pics.

Bert

[Daniel Bohle]

I have here something different but somehow about the same thing
but its not for ammos...its for berus.
extra for Michael I present this on a very unscientific way

y - axis: percent of the animals where I was able to get a foto of the head scales (or at least for detection useable parts of the head scales)
x - axis: the complete year, for each month two result, no results for january and december
data based on 4143 observations from 2006 to 2011

numbers are quite high because in a lot of cases I simply came back a second or third time to get the head...but on the other hand, for insitu pics you could came back too.
for the numbers during the hot summer month, please keep in mind that I regulary just went out during cold and ugly summer days. I stopped research on hot weather periods nearly complete because I don´t like to stand up very early

so we need to do this research for each species, each time of the year and each type of weather....and each type of auto fokus system
and and and....

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

I like graphs!
Nevermind too much about science - it's interesting to record and summarise things. And share!