Sunday 26th October
Well, what a disaster for the start of our trip, we arrived at Gatwick airport and decided to have a big breakfast and a pint of beer at 5 am. We then got to our gate at the airport to find that they had shut it 2 minutes earlier and would not open it despite the fact that we could have ran and caught the other passengers up.A solution was finally found on one of the service desks after Easyjet proved to be no use at all. We caught a coach to Heathrow airport, a plane to Majorca and another to Menorca (the credit card bill has just arrived and the amount is top secret
) We spent the first day of our holiday travelling and finally arrived at our studio apartment at 7 pm. The owner gave us a much welcome bottle of wine and a Moorish gecko Tarentola mauritanica was soon spotted on the outside wall
Monday 27th
A quick check behind the window shutters gave a couple of Moorish geckos T mauritanica and then we headed for the port of Mahon for breakfast. After eating we headed for a nearby rubbish tip mentioned in a trip report where snakes were found, I thought I had found the correct location but something just didn't look right but we searched through what was there. Our first find was the sad remains of a Hermann's tortoise Testudo hermani but we soon found a few live ones including some young ones hiding beneath plastic. Moorish geckos T mauritanica were beneath almost every piece of cover and this was repeated throughout the holiday
Suzanne looking for snakes
Our next stop was a large quarry where we hoped to find a few species, the Moroccan rock lizard S perspicillata was rather easy, we pulled up in the car and one was sitting on the wall in front of us
. Despite walking around the site and turning over everything we could find we only saw more Moorish geckos T mauritanica and a few Italian wall lizards Podarcis siculus
Tuesday 28th
We started the day with a visit an unfinished neighbouring house where we turned various pieces of rubbish to find only more T mauritanica. The next stop was at the head of the Barranque d'Algender but despite walking a couple of miles and turning over many stones we found only a few . It was then getting rather hot so we headed for the beach and dunes at Son bou.We had lunch and spent some time watching Humming bird hawk moths feeding from the flowers A walk through the dunes gave another T hermani and a few P siculus but a black sky and the sound of heavy thunder had us heading back for a quick stop at the rubbish tip. 2 more T hermani were soon found plus the usual geckos. I squeezed behind some bushes to check some rubbish visible from the road when I suddenly heard Suzanne shout that she had found a snake ! I ran round to find her looking at an Algerian false smooth snake beneath a small plank of wood.
That horrible moment when you realise you have stopped the car and ran back 100 yards to find a banana skin.
Wednesday 29 th
Another unfinished house looked promising but once again we found just P siculus and T mauritanica so we moved on to Port d'Addaia and visited the Illes de ses Mones to see Lilford's wall lizards P lilfordi. We waded across the channel and sought an entry point onto the island. I retrieved my clothes from the plastic bag I was carrying and Pushed and scrambled through the chest high spiny bushes littered with large boulders and finally reached the summit where I then discovered an easy pathway on the other side
We stayed for an hour on the top watching the lizard and then waded back across to a welcome jug of Sangria in the harbour bar. From here we moved onto the wetlands at Albufera where a planned walk was soon changed when we found it full of a loud party of school children.
NOT a snake!
Thursday 30th
I was confused about the tip and so checked again via google earth and found another nearby location worthy of a look, one side of the site was full of old road signs etc which looked promising but proved a waste of time so we walked down the bottom of the site. This looked more like the images seen but the rubbish seems to have been removed, a T hermani was found hiding beneath a small pile of rubbish. Following a tip from a hotel review we headed to a beach on the south coast to check for terrapins in some freshwater. We waited by the water for a while but only saw Red eared terrapins Trachemys s elegans and P siculus. Moving on from here we walked up the other end of the Barranque hoping to find a few snakes but once again despite a mad flipping session we found nothing. We stopped at an old pumping station where I quickly noticed a European pond terrapin Emys obicularis stuck in a square concrete tank holding a few inches of water. I quickly released this back into the nearby stream and walked up the riverbank seeing another 3 but they moved too quick for photos.
Friday 31st
Today we headed for a bay on the north coast where we hoped to see more terrapins in a freshwater creek, unfortunately we only managed to identify T s elegans once again despite google earth showing pictures of E obicularis at this site. We walked over towards the beach and I saw a familiar shape in the water, it was a Viperine snake Natrix maura lying on the bottom of the creek. A couple of hours swimming was followed by a walk through the local woodlands and heath where I found several T hermani, P siculus and another T mauritanica. One of the tortoises had a deformed shell. A stone pile was revealed to be a small building large enough to stand up in, no idea why it was built or who by,when etc.
Euscorpius balearicus
Saturday 1st
After talking to the owner of our holiday property we headed for a rocky area of coast to check for reptiles, as usual no sign of snakes but a few P siculus running around. A pond was spotted en route but despite an unidentified terrapin sliding into the water nothing else was found. In the afternoon we headed for Es grau where we found P siculus on a small rocky "island" in the bay. The rest of the day was spent relaxing on the beach and all thoughts of the other Menorcan species disappeared.
Menorca is a beautiful island and we had a lovely holiday but we found the lack of snakes rather puzzling as we were there the same time of year as successful herpers, we visited the same areas and flipped many stones but found only 2 snakes through out our stay. Despite this, we found our target species.
