Afternoon Adders

[Matt Wilson]

Afraid I don't have many photos of it, but here is a larger image of the snake. Although I didn't measure it, the snake was 'large', probably too large to be a male and all the other berus close to it on that morning were all female 100% as you can see in the photos. Also if I had observed Kevin's pics more closely I would have noticed the tail However, I have seen some very pale females in the past, which really made things quite confusing in the field.

[Mario Schweiger]

Yes, its a female!
Also here in Austrian lowland populations, sometimes we have silvergrey females (Ibm peat bog, 2010-08-11)

Mario

[Jürgen Gebhart]

The Grass snakes are very nice!!!!

Nice!

Keeps me wondering why we never find these "black-and-white" males in Belgian adders...

I never found a black-and-white male in my area, just black ones.

[Paul Lambourne]

Great post, fabulous berus and habitat shots.. who could want more I am an unashamed viper boy

Cheers Paul

[Brett Lewis]

I can also confirm that the last set of images shows a female..

I have been looking at the scale and adder head patterns at a number of sites and over a number of years. My work has been following up on a paper that recognised the possibilities of sexing Adders using images of the Rostral scale and pre-nasal shields. The markings of the individual shown on the last image is very indicative of a female V. berus.

So, along with the sheer size of the animal, the 'stepped' tail, the general colouration, rostral colouration and sub-caudal scale counts it should be really quite straight forward to sex animals in the field. Lots of text on the subjects out there folks, but happy to answer any questions I can.

Kind regards,

Brett