fieldherping.eu

Up here in highly seasonal Finland, Vipera berus can turn pretty much nocturnal. A few years ago a fellow spanish fieldherper came over. The temps were ridiculous. It didn't dip below 25C for a good month. We looked for, and found adders between 23 and 01 hours.

Midsummer weeked going on, but f*ck it's cold.

edit: weeks -> month.

Martti Niskanen wrote:The temps were ridiculous. It didn't dip below 25C for a good month.
We looked for, and found adders between 23 and 01 hours.

Really glad to hear that, because the night activity of V. berus is a "common place" in all
literature on snakes, just taken for granted, but I've never seen any DATA on that...

As far as we can call "night" Finnish summer nights .
I guess that in these days the far Northern sky barely turn totally dark,so there's light for most part of night time,isn't it?

Massimo Trentin wrote:As far as we can call "night" Finnish summer nights .
I guess that in this days the far Northern sky barely turn totally dark,
so there's light for most part of night time,isn't it?

Yes, of course. I actually meant real nights, dark nights, in general. But even the " Finnish summer nights"
are at least some proof of something that noone has felt obliged to prove at all.... It seems (to me) that
just everyone takes that for granted, in case of V. berus, but on what evidence, actually?

Thanks to all for their reports.
The most "interesting" thing, for me, is the total lack of reports of nocturnal activity in E.quatuorlineata...
Aesculapian snakes and leopardsnakes belong now to a different genus (Zamenis), and both species are undoubtedly also highly nocturnal: it may seems rather "strange", but not impossible, that a somehow related species, as the E.quatuorlineata/sauromates, was never seen active in the night by anybody. But, till now, this seems to be a fact!

Ruggero Morimando wrote:Thanks to all for their reports.
The most "interesting" thing, for me, is the total lack of reports of nocturnal activity in E.quatuorlineata...
Aesculapian snakes and leopardsnakes belong now to a different genus (Zamenis), and both species are undoubtedly also highly nocturnal: it may seems rather "strange", but not impossible, that a somehow related species, as the E.quatuorlineata/sauromates, was never seen active in the night by anybody. But, till now, this seems to be a fact!

I have found one time a 4lineata at around 22:00 (together with dozens Natrix sp.) in May on the road on the dam through skutari lake (Virpazar to Podgorica)

Thanks Mario!

On one of the only warm nights last year in the Sierra de Guadarrama we found four or five snakes after dark on the road.