Decided to avoid the weekend crowds and try to see the Adders that have been showing very well for the last few weeks at the reserve but typically for me the warm sunshine of recent days had given way to cloudy skies but as it was still quite warm I persevered and I was glad I did. A walk past the normal haunt of these snakes revealed nothing so I carried on to Island mere hide which resulted in distant Bittern sightings and fleeting glimpses of a Jack Snipe along with the usual collection of ducks,geese and grebes. As the temperature rose and the sun tried to break through I strolled back along the path and amongst a pile of wood and scrub recently cleared sudden movement caught my eye which turned out to be a Common Lizard that on closer examination was revealed to be a female. Initially perched on a log the lizard moved through the pile allowing brief opportunities to take pictures of which a couple can be seen below.
As I walked along I was continually looking into patches of Brambles and the dead leaves that coated the ground and eventually was rewarded with the sight of a female Adder basking in a small gap in a tangle of undergrowth. I approached slowly and upon closer inspection realised that another Adder was also there, darker in colouration with a cloudy blue eye which indicated that it was soon about to shed its skin. The two snakes slowly moved closer to each other giving me the chance to take a variety of images including a few closer shots before I moved away to leave them undisturbed.
Adders emerge from hibernation in March to breed when the generally smaller males will compete with each other to mate with the females. The males are often lighter in colour being either grey or almost white with dark zig zag patterns whereas the females are normally brown also with the same patterns. Sometimes at this time of the year you can see two males intertwined trying to push each other to the ground and this is known as 'dancing' and is spectacular to see. The larger snake normally wins and gets the chance to mate with the female. The female then normally moves some distance away to give birth to live young, sometimes as far as a kilometre or so in August but as the temperature drops they return to their traditional hibernating sites for the winter. On Monday I was not fortunate enough to see any males displaying but this may have been due to the lack of sunshine as they have been seen regularly in recent days. Oh well, maybe next time!
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