fieldherping.eu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opLnj4z ... load_owner

Not mine, terribly sorry. I've known that hotspot for some years. As it appears from
the local road, you'd never try to search for any ammodytes there, unless you know...

nice video
but why one would not think on vipers just at the road side?

Cool video!

Mario Schweiger wrote:but why one would not think on vipers just at the road side?

This place is not just beside the road, it's a nice, innocent-looking hill which you can see from
the main road. But from what you CAN see from the road, you would probably just drive on and
ignore it...

Mario Schweiger wrote:but why one would not think on vipers just at the road side?

Regarding "just at the road side", this one really is. A hibernaculum, just at the road side.
Most probably the "secret place" of R. F., which he stubbornly refuses to reveal to anyone,
keeping it to himself only, but we (the "locals", the "natives") are also not stupid...




The following photo is by Igor Vilaj (28 April 2013), not mine. But it shows the same place at a more favourable moment:


So, just as you wished, at the very road side. An asphalt road. Don't tell R. F. we've found it. But I'll show it to you,
or anyone around here decent enough, since I don't owe it to anyone (except Ivo Peranić, but he's a good friend, and
we did it together...)

What a crazy image The video is a reminder for me that ammodytes can be as beautiful as an aspis.

Niklas Ban wrote:The video is a reminder for me that ammodytes can be as beautiful as an aspis.

Ooooo... Dangerous statement...

Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:

Niklas Ban wrote:The video is a reminder for me that ammodytes can be as beautiful as an aspis.

Ooooo... Dangerous statement...

I'd say a handsome ammodytes individual is more beautiful than an ugly aspis one. And vice versa.
Regarding the average (i.e. the majority), I have my personal opinion, but will keep it to myself.

The photograph of the clustered ammodytes is an impressive one! Do you actually find vipers in the same concentration around the hill, or is this particular hill an "isolated island" surrounded by roads and farming fields? I would be curious to see your own pics from that place during a favorable time of the year

Guillaume Gomard wrote:The photograph of the clustered ammodytes is an impressive one! Do you actually find vipers in the same concentration around the hill, or is this particular hill an "isolated island" surrounded by roads and farming fields? I would be curious to see your own pics from that place during a favorable time of the year

First of all, let's make it clear: the video clip is from one locality, and the three photos below from a quite another one. They are not connected in any way.
The latter is a collective hibernaculum at the very edge of the local main asphalt road. So, if you come there at just the right time, when they emerge from hibernation, you might have impressive sightings. Ivo Peranić and I came a week or so too early, and saw only three or four. Igor Vilaj came somewhat later in the year, and found the cluster I've shown. R. F. claims to have encountered some fifty or more, if THIS really is HIS secret place - we can't be 100% sure, and he won't tell. We didn't have
the time to search the surroundings of this hibernaculum, but it's so-so.
The "magic hill" (from the video) are actually two connected hills, one loosely inhabited (by humans), and the other one free of them. We did try to search in their surroundings as well, but the results were meagre, so this probably is an island - not
quite isolated, of course, but a golden one. The inhabited one is actually the more golden one of the two, for the reason which remains invisible from afar (from the main road), hidden by vegetation... Numerous huge heaps of loose stone, remaining from the clearing of soil for vineyards, now overgrown with bushes. What else would a viper wish for...

Would you stop to search for V. ammodytes e. g. HERE? I guess nobody would. And where's the STONE?
In short, in the north of continental Croatia, you (or rather, THEY) can find a typically Mediterranean habitat - but not everywhere. Elsewhere they have to make do with what nature itself provided, but that's also far from bad.