As part of the preparations for the winter we try to check as many water holes as we can before the rain will come (even though that the yearly average rainfalls in our desert area is les than 110 mm).
Last Saturday Guy' Amir, Liam and me checked more than 10 water holes and found many reptiles species.
During this trip I lost my camera and all the photos presents in this massage were taken by Guy Haimovitch ©.
The main habitat type that we herped in was a stabilize dunes in the western Negev desert.
During Friday after noon we found plenty of Acanthodactylus sp. (mainly longipes and scutellatus) and other lizards like chameleons. There were plenty tracks of Sand fishes, but the hour was too late to find them - all the tracks ended in a gerbils borrows.
During the night there was a very high activity of the species Cerastes vipera and Litorhyncus diadema (We found few next to our camp site).
We manage to see few rodent species like the Jaculus in this photo:
On Saturday morning we started to check the water holes;
We found:
3 Varanus griseus:
1 walterinnesia aegyptia:
1 Spalerosophis diadema:
and many colubers rogersi and lizards.
Most of the animals were released (we took two of the Varanus to the wildlife hospital - hopefully they will be back in nature next spring).
On sunday I plan another 2 days trip in order to check another habitat (Rocky / Loess).