story of female SL2

[Daniel Bohle]

It´s nearly the top time of the year and people here in the forum behave like it would be winter.
I think its time for some herp related stuff

So now I tell you the story of female SL2. Lets begin with the ending of the story. A very sad part...


To be continued ....

[Bobby Bok]

It´s nearly the top time of the year and people here in the forum behave like it would be winter.
I think its time for some herp related stuff

Finally, let's see more!!! Eventough it must be a sad story indeed...

[Daniel Bohle]

2006

One day I was looking for new berus spots, close to my already know berus locations.
Maybe 500m away - in the middle of nowhere - deep inside the high forest I found a middle age forest plantation.
Somehow slightly to old for letting the sun down to the ground but whatever, i jumped from my bicycle to have a look.
I turned around after a few minutes without finding any sunny spot in that area, although I didn´t looked everywhere.
Somehow I was afright, someone might steal my bike....in the middle of nowhere

Back home I looked at my sattelite maps and saw that there seems to be a tiny little open area in that forest plantation that looked quite promising
to bad I missed it...

To be continued ....

[Matthijs Hollanders]

Nice specimen. If the story is how you got that specimen, it's not all that sad! Goes to science.

[Daniel Bohle]

2007

In may - after the spring season - I found the time to explore new spots again.
So I also tried again this place in the middle of the high forest.
This time I locked my bike on a tree
I stepped direkt to the place that I saw on the sattelite pics but too sad, this place was way smaller than expected.
Maybe 15x4 meter of open sunny grassland. Really not enough place for a good berus spot - at least if the next better spot is 500m away.
But 10 years before this spot might be a good one and I could find the last survivors..so let´s see.

I directly found a baby, most probably from 2006 - SL1.

SL is just an internal name for that place.
Like if you would find a spot with an old tree, I would call this spot OT and the first animal from that spot would be called OT1.

And then I found my lady SL2 for the first time (13.5.)

And finally a third animals SL3

Seems to had some trouble with a predator!

Two weeks later I showed this tiny futureless spot to a friend of mine and we found SL2 a second and last time for 2007 (31.05.)

She moved about 10 m to the entrance of that spot....a very dark area with nearly no sun.

It´s the story about SL2 and not about the spot SL but just as a bonus info:
In autum I showed this place to Michael and we found SL1 a second time...unfortunatly also the last time.
SL3 was never seen again.

To be continued ....

[Daniel Bohle]

2008

We started the year with trying to open up this spot - to bad I can´t find the before picture I made in summer 2007.
In winter it does not look that small. Maybe a fisheye lens is also not the best for showing how small something is

finished

In spring I found a single black male at this spot, but ... that´s not the story.
Over the rest of the year I made nearly no other observations until october when I found my lady again (11.10.).
She was laying on a tiny sunny spot deep inside the forest plantation - seems to be the hibernaculum.

I love autumn hibernaculum observations - magic moments!!!

To be continued ....

[Daniel Bohle]

2009

Next spring I found her at the hibernaculum again (02.04) - spring is cool, but not that magic as you can see:-D

In summer I saw her two times, (30.6. & 20.07), not sure but I would say she was gravid this year.
I´m not regulary visit this spot because its far away with not so many animals and I just go there if some time is left.
In july she still had a meal as you can see ;-D

Later the year I had no magic moment

To be continued ....

[Daniel Bohle]

2010

Next spring she was back at her hibernaculum (06.04) and now I was sure, she was gravid. She doesn´t look very good...

But what happend here, she disliked my presence and craweld away to the next tree where she simply coiled and waited for me to leave her alone

Typical for not reproduing females, you rarely see them again after spring until autumn - mostly at the hibernaculum again.

Still not in a very good shape (04.10)

And again she disliked my presence and she coiled again close to the next tree...wow, I never saw that before, and especially never two time with the same animal

To be continued ....

[Daniel Bohle]

2011

This year I was not able to spot her.
To be honest, I was sure she didn´t survived the winter - at least after not finding her even in autumn:
But as she surely was not in the condition to reproduce in 2011, so maybe I just missed her in spring and autumn at the hibernaculum.
That place was getting darker and darker each year and I think, if they decide to go to the hibernaculum they do it fast, without taking any sunbathing - I mean there is anyway no sun anymore.
And in spring the same, they may lay there anyway just one or two days....and if you don´t go there every few days you chance to find them might be small.
So...but I was sure, she is dead.

To be continued ....

[Daniel Bohle]

2012

Next spring I found nothing, so for me it was clear...SL2 is dead.
But in may I suddenly saw 3 femals on that spot. One nearly black one and two normal colored females.
Very strange, I just know one normal colored females from that spot and that´s "dead" and now there are two???
Possible but not likely.
SL2

SL10 and SL(no number yet)

The first thing I did at home was to look through my pics and yes, SL2 is still alive
Over the summer I saw her and the two other ladys about 5 times.

Last time I saw her was 18.08 and she was still gravid. Very late but the weather this year was not the best.
I found the first babys on 25.8 at a different spot and next time I visited the SL spot was last sunday 02.09.

The first thing I saw was this sad sight

Some blood came out of the mouth, some parts missed at the tail but not a single sign of a fight, no bite injury but the back was brocken to times close to the tail.
How was this possible? Maybe a deer jumped on her? I often saw deer laying close to the viper spots at this place...

At least she looked like giving birth bevore and so I started to look for some babys and close to the mother I found about 10 babys laying outside waitung for the sun.
Not all from her, but at least some must be her babys ;-D

So that was the story of SL2. The day I found her dead she was 98g and 66.5 cm.
In total I saw her 13 times, maybe a few times more, usually you don´t get good enough pics everytime.
Her maximum determined home range was tiny ~0.1 ha and the longest distance between two spots was ~60m.