Today me and my wife went for a day out in the local nature reserve in Greater London. Weather was crap (surprisingly ) - strong wind with not so light showers of rain and a bit of sun between them. We went to check our snake spot anyway. We saw something that most of you would be quite familiar with – an adder and a grass snake basking together. This was not a surprise for me because by that time of year the vegetation at this spot is quite high and there are not too many good basking sights. This is how we found them.
I approached them very carefully to take some photos but the grass snake got spooked and went off into the vegetation. The adder, startled by the grass snake, started to get going but because I stopped moving it decided I’m not a threat and stayed where it was. Literally a few seconds later the grass snake came back. The adder then approached it, they exchanged a few tongue flicks and intertwined together again although there was plenty of space for the two snakes to stay next to each other rather than on top of each other.
I understand why they bask on the same spot (few suitable basking sights) but I was wondering why they would intertwine like that even though they didn’t have to. It seemed as they enjoyed each other’s company, or benefited from it in some way…maybe it’s easier to retain heat this way? It would be interesting to hear what you think and if there’s any studies done on this kind of behavior.
At the same time just a couple of meters away from them was another grass snake basking alone at a much bigger and more open sight that would have fitted more than five snakes without them having to overlap.
Thanks.