The day before we were due to leave I fell whilst climbing at my local climbing wall and hurt my lower back.. rest and no exercise was proscribed.. bugger that, I gagged some pain killers and on a chilly morning last week, myself , Trevor Willis, a fine photographer and possibly the most stressed man on the planet, Sean Cole, the notable UK Birder and orchid top boy and his lovely fiancé Trudi all met at Gatwick airport for a short plane ride to sunny Barcelona. We landed at the airport and in no time cleared customs, expecting to see the happy chubby face of Sjeord awaiting us.. Sjeord a highly trained military individual had gone to the wrong terminal.. he claimed later that he was tired from his Morocco trip, as he had to find all the animals for Gert Jan and Frank etc.. this was to be a reoccurring theme ..
We packed the hire car, an art in itself.. described as an estate.. in much the same way an estate agent selling a house in Syria might say the area has a lively night life.. we drove straight to the very small geographical distribution site for the Montseny brook newt. We uncurled ourselves from the tiny car and set about searching amidst the stunning alpine scenery of the Montseny mountains. The weather was pleasantly hot, and we had at least three days to search the area for this much wanted amphibian. The mountain streams were all but dried up, being mere trickles some 30 cms wide..
I started searching a small stream bed, largely dried up, with a few small pools remaining, after sliding down the steep sides on my behind for too many meters. In the first pool, I moved a flat rock and found five arnoldi efts… a tick in under ten minutes.. number 150! at the same time Sean who had been searching further up stream hollered that he had found an adult. To say we were stoked is an understatement.. Sjeord and Trev had also found efts in another small stream. We photographed and released the newts and then realised we had a great deal of time left to find other species.
We flipped in an area of open land and saw a number of wall lizards, the general feeling being these were mauralis not leolepis and some fragilis.
After a hot hour or so we constricted ourselves back into our car, so nice when you have a bad back, and headed for our accommodation to dump the bags and make further plans. On arrival in the little town square it dawned on us that Spain goes to sleep for much of the afternoon.. everything was shut.. not a tea to be had for love nor money. Eventually we found a small corner shop open and the vertically and hearing challenged owner seemed exceptionally happy with the amount of water, fruit and cake we purchased from him. After a while we found our accommodation, dropped our bags, drank coffee and searched google earth for suitable habitat nearby.. what did herpers do before I phones ??? Mario? Jurgen?
We headed for a riverside area close to the hotel and within minutes Sjeord had found a lovely pair of fragilis, and a few minutes later a juvenile natrix maura. Sean found an adult a few moments later. We continued further into the area and Sean found a lovely toad under a boulder.. I presume given the area it must be spinosus but it looked more bufo bufo to me. After a pleasant couple of hours we returned to the acomm,
We had a quick clean up, dinner and a beer and decided what our nocturnal plans would be.. Trudi and Sean decided to call it a night .. something about tummy rubbing? So Sjeord, Trev and myself jumped in the now more spacious car and headed to a known amphibian site close to the Spanish /French border.. an hour and forty mins later we were at the site.. a dune area with numerous flooded areas.. now I have been lucky enough to herp in many countries around the world, but I have never heard such a deafening frog chorus as the one that greeted us as we approached the dunes. I have never seen tree frogs in such numbers, or pelophylax.. literally thousands of frogs as far as the eye could see. It seemed that every bush, shrub and bulrush held a group of hyla meridionalis hoping to out croak one another. Our main reason for visiting the site was to find Pelobates cultripes , and both Sjeord and myself quickly found the huge tadpoles of this species. We searched for a couple of hours, sadly finding no adults, meridionalis, perezi and mauritanica were seen in large numbers. The site was within the distribution of Grafs Hybrid frog but how you tell the difference is beyond me ..Sjeord started grizzling about how tired he was and that he had carried the others in Morroco.. following Gert Jans advice I gave him some tissues and I let him nap in the car as I drove home on what is blatantly the wrong side of the road.
Up early for breakfast the next day and we were back in the car and heading for another site at higher altitude for some amphibians. On route we stopped at some suitable habitat and Sjeord found a beautiful juvenile Natrix natrix astreptophora..I was well pleased, bringing my Natrix sub species total to eight if you count natrix natrix and helvetica separately.
At the site was a small man made pond and this had perezi and plenty of dragonflies, as well as Psammodromus algirus and bufo spinosus . We carried on, stopping briefly for a very photogenic algirus on route.
Eventually after driving up some very windy mountain roads in our very under powered car, we came to an alpine meadow area.. Sean was as happy as a Belgian with a sound proofed cellar as the grassland had a lot of orchid species and natural hybrids between them..
also we had amazingly close views of the Griffon vultures enjoying the thermals from the cliff edges. In the meadow area was a small pond, very overgrown with weed and containing an introduced population of Ommatotriton ophryticus . Sean and Sjeord went into the pond and soon we had a stunning male and three females , as well as tadpoles of Alytes obstetricans almogavarii.
The abandoned buildings had good numbers of Podarcis leolepis
Anybody know what this is???
We left the site as the light was fading and headed to our accommodation.. the cougar of a land lady groped me outrageously but the rooms were good.. an early night and some much needed sleep followed.. no tummy rubbing..
After a splendid breakfast and a goodbye grope we head back towards Barcelona.. Sjeord had a mid afternoon flight so we took the chance of stopping for an hour or so at some suitable habitat along the route. I found a nice mauritanicus and then Sjeord helped me flip a large rock and underneath was a splendid Rhinechis scalaris.
After a quick photo session and stressful drive through Barcelona we dropped Sjeord of at the right terminal, a sad farewell, but I will be catching up with him for Dutch Herpfest in a few weeks.. I will sob into my pillow until then. The rest of team Brit had a few hours to kill and once more google earth was fantastic, identifying some great habitat about thirty mins from the airport. We arrived in the area, and spoke to two charming Spanish biologists that were surveying for various plants and pollinators.. they told us that Timon, Hemmorrhois and Vipera were found in the area and hinted to a valley close by.. the valley was very beautiful and soon we saw algirus and maurintanica and then whilst flipping rocks I found a stunning sub adult Timon, it ran at amazing speed into a bush, we surrounded the bush and it managed to run straight through Trevs legs.. no pictures but at least we all got good views of it. There was a small man made pond with perezi and some unidentified tadpoles..Sean also saw a skink, but it was too quick to catch.
Finally we headed to the airport, Trev and I saying goodbye to Sean and Trudi.. I got home at around midnight..
A very pleasant quick and dirty trip.. a lot of species seen in a few days, four new to me and some great new sub species.
Thanks to the team for their company and looking after me with a bad back. .thanks especially to Sjeord for all the driving he did, despite being sooooo tired for being top Moroccan herper, and a huge thanks to the usual suspects for help, advice and info. You know who you are, love you guys sniff…
Off to France tomorrow and Holland the week after..cant wait..
Cheers
Pauli
