After a quick hours sleep in the car we started looking around a site close to fish farms and immediately found the typical enormous bullfrog tadpoles.. hundreds of the buggers.. the adults were harder to come by..very skittish jumping into the water long before we got close enough to take pics.. luck and patience eventually paid off and we maneged to get close to a few..
well pleased we headed back to the car.. .. we headed to a site for some specific dragonflies, and quickly found our target.. also on site were tree frog, edible frog(I think ) and the very beautiful moor frog...
We reluctantly left the beautiful marshland site and headed further into darkest Belgium for more dragonflies.. sadly we did not see our target species here, the weather was getting worse, if thats possible..but I did see some rather sexy spiders..
Wetter than otters pockets we then drove to the sunny paradise of Holland, here we stopped at an old quarry and found huge numbers of yellow bellied toad, alpine newt, common toad and the usual collection of hard to identify green frogs..
We then headed further North for some spadefoot hunting..the site was stunning, however as darkness started to fall I assumed I had more chance of dating Cheryl Cole than any spadefoot action, we still found crested newt, more of the green stuff and bufo bufo by the ton.. we headed even further into Holland and checked out another site, by this time it was around two AM and I was quite tired,so we badged up and had a little sleepy in the car till eight..after a delicious breakfast of biscuits and milkshake, we headed to a massive inland dune site for butterflies.. getting our target species within minutes.. well pleased with ourselves we jumped back in the car and decided to brave Belgium again..
We arrived at a park near Brussels and set about locating Siberian chipmonks.. this proved very easy as they were friendlier than a ten dollar ho at closing time.. also at the park on the large ponds were the sadly ubiquitous red earred terrapin.
We left the park and headed to another site close by, and after an epic attempt to gain access, involving large amounts of near vertical scrambling we entered another abandoned quarry, here we could hear midwife toads calling, we soon located a beautiful little individual.. and then another.. we also saw good numbers of toads and more green frogs...
We then embarrassing realised that you could just get in and out via a main gate... so we sheepishly left and headed out of Belgium and into France.. we arrived, after a rather splendid Mc Donalds supper (anything tastes good when you have not eaten properly for two days) at a small reserve near Lille. We walked the steep path through the woodland in the dark, seeing Tawny owls and upon reaching the summit plateau was practically deafened by the sound of natterjacks coming from a small pond, shinning our torches we saw hundreds of these stunning creatures, and many tadpoles..
Also present in large numbers was a favourite of mine the very cute parsley frog,
It was midnight so tired, very crumpled and a bit whiffey we decided to head back to blighty.. shit, shampoo and showered, a proper cup of tea, as you continentals cant make the stuff
then into bed at 4am for some sleep..it was a most enjoyable few days, huge thanks to the people that gave us some hints of where to look... sadly the spade foot elluded us but I am off to Hungary for vipers in a few weeks,and I might get to tick it then
Cheers all.
