A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

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A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

Postby Ilian Velikov » Sun Jul 02, 2017 7:22 pm

I just came back from a family holiday in Galicia. The great thing about visiting a place you’ve never been to before, especially one with so many endemic species like Spain, is that everything you see is new. This was the case for me this time so I didn’t really bother to do any serious herping and just had a look around at the places we visited. The weather wasn’t great (it rained for 5 out of 7 days) and in total I had about 4-5 hours of “herping” for the whole week but I was lucky enough to see five species new to me and one that I’ve only seen once last year in Cantabria. I’ll post a few photos all of which (except two which you'll notice) are in-situ. I'm trying to catch as little as possible.

First, the garden of the house in which we were staying had some cool lizards and insects.

1G_stick.JPG
Spanish Walking Stick (Leptynia hispanica)

2G_mont.JPG
Iberolacerta monticola, young

3G_mont.JPG
Iberolacerta monticola, male, at the roof of the house

4G_mont.JPG
same

5G_mont.JPG
same



Than the beach at which we went had two lizard species and one snake species. Not too bad for a beach!
6B_habitat.jpg

7B_dragon.JPG
Beach dragonfly. Species ID anyone?

8B_bocagei.JPG
Podarcis bocagei, male. The only one I saw, hence the crappy photo.

9B_chalc.JPG
Chalcides striatus, I only saw the second one on the left once I looked at my photos at home

10B_chalc.JPG
Another one

11B_seoanei.JPG
Vipera seoanei

12B_seoanei.JPG
same


Finally, we went for a walk along a river not far away where there were some tiny recently metamorphosed frogs and the fifth stone I turned had a little gem I was really hoping to find.
13R_habitat.JPG

14R_iberica.JPG
Rana iberica

15R_chio.JPG
Chioglossa lusitanica, on the stone under which I found him.

16R_chio.JPG
same


All and all I’m pretty happy with how the holiday turned out and I can't wait to go back to Spain.
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Re: A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

Postby Michal Szkudlarek » Sun Jul 02, 2017 9:45 pm

when i read "Galicia" I thought you ment this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Eastern_Europe) Galicia :oops:
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Re: A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

Postby Daniel Kane » Sun Jul 02, 2017 10:47 pm

Awesome finds Ilian! I love it when you can travel somewhere with so many new species to see. That Chioglossa is a stunner, and for seoanei to be the only snake! You could do a lot worse! Congratulations :)
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Re: A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

Postby Ilian Velikov » Sun Jul 02, 2017 11:23 pm

Michal, we can only go herping in countries that still exist ;)

Daniel, thanks! Yes, it was really nice - lying on the beach, going for a swim and whenever you feel like it just take a leisurelly stroll for a few hundred meters to check how the vipers, skinks and wall lizards are doing :) And the Chioglossa was indeed stunning. I read about it but I was still surprised how quick and agile they are when trying to escape.
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Re: A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

Postby Michal Szkudlarek » Sun Jul 02, 2017 11:39 pm

Michal, we can only go herping in countries that still exist ;)

european galicia is also a name for geographic region so it exists as a country (not as a state though)
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Re: A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

Postby Thomas Reich » Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:21 pm

Hi Ilian
Nice observations. I think your dragonfly is a female of Orthetrum coerulescens.
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Re: A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

Postby Ilian Velikov » Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:35 pm

Thomas Reich wrote:Hi Ilian
Nice observations. I think your dragonfly is a female of Orthetrum coerulescens.


Thanks Thomas! I think you're right about the dragonfly.
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Re: A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

Postby Jeroen Speybroeck » Mon Jul 03, 2017 1:11 pm

+1 on coerulescens

Hope to find a Chio too next week. Such special salamanders....
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Re: A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

Postby Ilian Velikov » Mon Jul 03, 2017 1:26 pm

Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:Hope to find a Chio too next week. Such special salamanders....

I was surprised how easy I found it, although I only found one...Maybe it's a matter of being at the right place, which I'm sure you won't have a problem with. Where are you going? At least in Galicia the weather was right for it - frequent showers with some intermittent sunshine, temperature 17-20 C. Vegetation was lush and green, unusual for this time of year I think, but good for amphibians. I heard many frogs calling at night but frustratingly the waters where the calls were coming from were extremely overgrown and inaccessible.
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Re: A few photos from Galicia - June 2017

Postby Jeroen Speybroeck » Mon Jul 03, 2017 2:11 pm

Asturias.
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