fieldherping.eu

Today, despite a rainy, windy sky and a temperature at around 10°C, I went to a traditional swiss place to try to watch both N. maura and tessellata.

I was lucky enough to find 2 juveniles of both N. maura and tessellate under the stones in an area of about 4 m2 !

All individuals show, I think, the typical criteria of identification.







more pics of these ind. http://www.pbase.com/stephaubry/natrix_tessellata_220412







more pics of these ind. http://www.pbase.com/stephaubry/natrix_maura_220412

And I repost a pic of a subadult N. maura I saw in La Crau, France on Friday (http://fieldherping.eu/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1094) because it shows a rare or atypical 3 postocular scales (more typical of N. tessellata instead the typical 2 of N. maura) and 2 preocular instead of 1.



more pics on http://www.pbase.com/stephaubry/natrix_maura_200412

Great pictures !

Love those tessellata eyes

Steve Devis wrote:Great pictures !

Love those tessellata eyes

Thanks Steve !

Next time, I hope to have some Natrix bigger than these 4 juveniles...

Remind us again - isn't tessellata introduced and displacing maura overthere, or was it the other way around?

Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:Remind us again - isn't tessellata introduced and displacing maura overthere, or was it the other way around?

N. maura exists in this place at a natural state. N. tessellata was introduced in this area in 1926 or before (the species is present at a natural state only in Tessin). Bigger size and better fecondity of tessellata seems to be an advantage and maura suffers of this.

N. maura is the most endangered snake species of Switzerland.

You can find a interesting text (in french) on http://www.karch.ch/karch/f/rep/nm/nmfs2.html look particularly at "Protection"

Excellent, thanks!

Wanna see more pics of the beauty Dice snake

Steve Devis wrote:Wanna see more pics of the beauty Dice snake

Sorry, very elusive, disappeared quickly

Today, with my two sons, we were back in the area, searching for adults (if possible...) N. maura and N. tessellata.
We found 8 Natrix tessellata and unfortunately only one N. maura, all were juveniles...





more pics http://www.pbase.com/stephaubry/natrix_maura_050512 and http://www.pbase.com/stephaubry/natrix_tessellata_050512