berus weekend

[Paul Lambourne]

Inspired by Jurgen, and as Tomaz and Erika were in dear old blighty.. I visited some of my local sites.. I am always excited to show some of the beautiful British berus to berus starved visitors Here are a few images from the day.
Firstly a chalk downland site

sub adult female

sub adult male

surf2.jpg (84.83 KiB) Viewed 5188 times

River meadow habitat

Adult male

Coastal marshland habitat

gravid female

Looking forward to seeing some juveniles later this month..

If anybody is visiting the UK and wants to go berus spotting..please feel free to get in touch .

Kind regards

Paul

[Peter Oefinger]

It seems the British adders become superstars!

[Jürgen Gebhart]

The first female is a beauty!

You on the island have the first berus out of hibernation and you still have gravid females?
Strange!
In my area the babies were born three weeks ago!

[Paul Lambourne]

Jurgen,

Over the weekend I was lucky enough to encounter three gravid females, in two locations. We tend to see juveniles being born around the end of September. No doubt I will bore you all with pictures...

Cheers Paul

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

We tend to see juveniles being born around the end of September.

Not sooner this year, or did a dreadful summer ruin the benefits of a warm spring? Any thoughts?

Overhere, at least some amphibians were earlier out of the water than usual, while some started breeding again after the summer rains (in an attempt to compensate for the lost larvae of spring) - of course Bufo calamita, but also not allegedly(!) less flexible species like Lissotriton vulgaris and Salamandra. Weird year...

[Paul Lambourne]

Jeroen,

It has indeed been an odd year..orchids were extremely early, as was many amphibians spawning and I too saw new Calamita tadpoles last month. However the male berus seemed to exit the local hibernaculum during the same weeks as previous years, females following in the same time frame as normal. I will monitor my sites carefully over the next few weeks, have not seen a single juvenile as yet...

Below is a poor shot of a gravid female I found under one of my survey tins at the weekend. Looks fit to burst I put the tin straight down, hence the poor shot

Cheers Paul

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Looks fit to burst

I'd say the same goes for that slow worm. When do those give birth usually? My flipping success went down after the promising 6 animals in spring - only 1 last sunday...

[Rok Grzelj]

Nice pics Paul!
Ineresting year indeed....We had a dry and warm second half of august(usually rainy) and first weeks of september.
Though it rained a lot in the past 2 days the water level is still low in the ditches.

Yesterday I visited my local agilis spot and observed many babies...some of them microscopic...I suppose a second clutch!?
which is probably the result of a prolonged summer.

[Ilian Velikov]

I don't know if information from that far east is relevant to western slow worms but I usually find newborn Anguis in August at my local spot in Bulgaria!

[Daniel Kane]

Newborn Anguis in the Lakes are usually around in mid-July. Some females have given birth here; I found a baby on the 1st of September.