Doing well seeing reptiles this year

[Mad Mike]

Not as well as I would like...

I was just zipping up the camera case when moving Water Lilly pads caught my eye.

A grass snake appeared from underneath only 10 feet from were I was on the bank & swam off at some speed. It was 3/4 the way across the pond before I got a shot - just as its head went under I think.

Very nice to see even if it was a bit camera shy.

Mike

 

[Matt42]

Good spotting, I havent seen one in about two years. How big do you think it was??

 

[Mad Mike]

I'm not sure. I was busy scrabbling to get the camera out while keeping it in sight, all without falling in myself. Kind of looked about 4 feet in all the excitment so possibly about 3 foot long. The biggest one I have ever seen in the open (only one in water)

Mike

 

[Colin.W]

I've not seen a grass snake for ages, we get loads of slow worms around here, the local woods are strictly stick to the path rule to try to protect the under brush and wildlife

 

[Harvestman]

Have seen plenty of slow worms, and last weekend I saw two adders together, just seconds after I had turned the camera off. Of course they noticed me and fled before I could turn it back on...

Only the second time I have ever seen an adder.

 

[Colin.W]

I got bit by an adder when I was about 13 my own fault for messing with it. all the scarey stories about poison snakes I imagined my demise, my hand swelled up a bit and I was a bit moby for a couple of days but survived another teenage steep learning curve, dont mess with things that you shouldn't.

 

[Matt42]

I have never seen an adder in the wild, but something i noticed about grass snakes is that one of the best places to see them imo is along the canal. Here, one side of the canal is usually 'wild' and just left to overgrow and the other side has the tow path and has metal gurding holding the bank back. This metal can put the bank over a foot above the water line in some places so the snakes get in one side and are unable to get out of the other and are unfortunatly trapped and i have been told they can drown like this, but off all the dead things i have seen in canals (and i have been stopped from passing as the police were draining a lock for a body which thankfully they didnt find) i have only seen one dead snake and have seen far more live ones, my father even reckons he saw a six foot one in there about ten years ago. But all these times i was on a loud diesel boat which pretty much scared everything into moving about.

But i suppose after all this rambling, i have a little question which i think ill be cheeky and ask here unless people think i should start a new thread on the matter. I know that the two live in different habitats, but which do you think is the more common in their own one, the adder or the grass snake???

Thanks Matt

 

[JonathanD]

The Grass snake is by far more common. The adder is in vast decline throughout the country and getting more scarce by the year.

In the last month I have logged 187 grass snakes in a 10 square mile area (approx). In that same area (which was historically an adder stronghold), I have only logged 62 individuals. The same statistics are repeated nationwide, but the adder is recorded far less in the huge majority of areas.

 

[Matt42]

Well you have had more luck at finding snakes than me then , i guessed it would be something like that but thanks for conferming it with great stats.