I just can't help myself.
These serpents are fascinating and so I thought that I would share some more piccies to provide additional delight from my weekend visit to the Somerset Levels. Of course, as you probably know, not all our scaly friends are real snakes. Slow worms (which are the small, sleek individuals lying centrally in the group photo) are in fact legless lizards. The ones in the photo are probably males. One of two appeared to have lost the ends of their body - probably when successfully escaping from a predator - neat trick!
I did not want to disturb them for too long so my identification is from the piccies only.
The other snakes below are adders with one grass snake also in the bottom picture. Interestingly adders eat slow worms - maybe these were too fast or too big for the adders.
If you are wondering why the pictures are a bit out of focus, its cos I had to hold up a big piece of corrugated iron in one hand with my Canon DSLR in the other (with a large lens), whilst getting the pictures, before my erstwhile subjects either bit me or made a hasty escape (OK- the biting bit was very unlikely).
