A bunch of eager to learn people from all Sweden gathered in Skövde, central Sweden for the first of 3 meetings in the first official University course on the subject Herpetology.
It will ofcourse also include field trips. Spring hasnt come very far yet, there where snow on some hills and roadsides, but it was at least some sun, and we hoped at least to find common frog, and maybe adders.
Since it is the culmination of the crane dance at lake Hornborgasjön, we made a first stop to watch the 12000 cranes and tousands of other birds.
This was very late in the afternoon, and the afternoon herping transformed into night herping. First find was a very slow Bufo bufo found on the shore of a pond, still with ice on most parts. We also flipped another toad. A toad as first herp wasnt what we expected.
After a drive to another set of ponds with very clear shallow water (no ice) we saw a larger salamander. We didnt manage to grab it for studies, but soon we found 3-4 more!
After another drive we finally saw the common frog, and quite a few. We enjoyed frogsinging and saw hundreds of newly laid eggballs.
We also stumbled across a few specimens of field frog, Rana arvalis.
On the parking lot we also found smaller salamander, and we also flipped a few.
This means we found 100% of the local ampibian fauna in just one evening, much more than expected!
Pretty good start, next week we will try to see more of the reptiles, we spotted a few viviparous lizards and an adder. There are also locals of grass snake and smooth snakes we will visit during the course, so hopefully it is more to come.
List:
Bufo bufo 3
Rana temporaria 30+ (at least)
Rana arvalis 2-3
Triturus vulgaris 10+
Triturus cristatus 4-5
Lacerta vivipara 1
Vipera berus 1
Grus grus 11000+
Map
http://maps.google.com/maps/empw?url=ht ... mbed&hl=sv