Spring on the Levels

THE warmth of today's spring weather brought out the adders; at least four were basking on a heap of cut grass; some were intertwined making it hard to count them with confidence.

The young silver birch leaves, the white bark and the red of the bog myrtle created quite a wonderful spectacle.

 

There are so many great-crested grebes on the Levels - both individuals and pairs were everywhere you looked.  The males send out a call that is like a bark to attract the females and probably warn off other males.  Other calls heard today included booming bitterns, screeching water-rails,  chittering little grebes, singing warblers and even croaking marsh frogs.

And finally a fine male robin was singing his heart out...

Serious snake action

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).