By Plato StefanopoulosChapter 1: a strong start
Going out in the field and targeting snakes and glass
lizards again felt so surreal to me as I was driving down the freeway, since it
had been such a long time since I’d actually done it. It was a long winter but
on that warm February 7th, while my hopes were low, I figured I should still
shoot my shot. While I was at some dirt roads, still miles away from my hiking
spot, I passed by this site and instantly remembered it, as I had found two
juvenile trilineata there last year. I pulled over, put my gloves on,
and started looking. Since the first good rocks didn’t produce anything, my
hopes diminished, but as I nonchalantly flipped an unassuming, small rock, I
was greeted by HER. An adult female Eastern Montpellier snake was one of my
biggest targets for this year, and this meter-long woman was just what I needed
to see as my first snake of 2022.
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| Adult female Malpolon in her extremely open and degraded habitat |
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| Still covered in mud, it is not completely unlikely that this was one of, if not her first day out of brumation. |
After letting the snake go after a few (hundred) pics, I
proceeded to search at the rest of my sites at the area, and I found numerous
ocellated skinks, juniper skinks, heard calling frogs, and I also flipped a
juvenile Pseudopus!
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Pseudopus apodus juvenile in habitat. This was an animal I had wanted to photograph for the longest time and I'm extremely grateful I had the opportunity to do so.
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| Macro of the same lizard |
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| Typical adult ocellated skink |
Late winter, or more generously “early spring”, is an intriguing
time of year to say the least, and before I went on that faithful outing in
Southern Attica, I had already noticed the big changes; calling frogs, the
first blooming wildflowers, the longer days and the subsequent emergence of
healthy reptiles generally marks the humble beginning of the herping season. It
is by no means an ideal time of year to be looking for snakes, as while there
may be warm fronts, there still is a lot of cold weather and most reptiles dare
not venture more than a few meters from their hibernacula. This early-mid
February warm front marked the first half-decent herping of the year.
Chapter 2: sunburnt in February
The warm weather reached a distinct peak in mid-February,
and I took full advantage of the circumstances. On the first of two sessions, I
met up with Charis and we went to southern Attica again and did some tedious
but rewarding habitat hiking, as we eventually did find an adult Eastern
Montpellier snake that had just emerged. We also found numerous common herps
such as ocellated skinks, juniper skinks, green toads, courting tortoises and
even an immaculate little tree frog. Much to our dismay, we did not find a
glass lizard, which was our main target.
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| Very pale adult female ocellated skink in its very open habitat |
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| Typical adult male ocellated skink (Picture by Charis Kouelis) |
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| Large female Montpellier snake in situ. she sucked back into her hole immediately after this photo was taken despite our best efforts not to disturb her (Picture by Charis Kouelis) |
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| A young green toad (Picture by Charis Kouelis) |
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An immaculate tree frog (Picture by Charis Kouelis)
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Two days passed and I was out again, this time in Central
Attica and in some honestly strange habitat. Perhaps the best way to label it
would be as “Mediterranean savannah”. The habitat was an extremely open and
surprisingly wet grassland with scattered trees, mastic shrubs and kermes oaks,
refuges and temporary waters. I had been there before in the summer and I was
planning to visit it in a better time of year. The temperature peaked at 21C, it
was hot and dry out, and I actually got sunburnt and dizzy, something that’s
normally unheard of in February. I mainly flipped and hiked habitat, but
regrettably, no snakes were found. That being said, I did find lots of other
herps and ended up leaving with many pictures that I liked. Perhaps the
highlight of the day was a really good looking adult trilineata that (embarrassingly
enough) slipped right out of my hands before I could even take pictures.
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Huge male ocellated skink. Most of them were massive at that site for whatever reason.
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| Green toad eggs |
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| Same |
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| Adult male margie looking for females |
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| Gravid female green toad |
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| playing hide and seek with a female margie |
Chapter 3: the Achaea fiasco
With the coming of March, terrible events in my personal
life, as well as the horrible state of the world, my eagerness to finally take
a trip to get my mind off of things peaked and no sooner had I thought that
than I booked a room in Achaea. The weather was pretty bad (9-14C and rainy),
but knowing the quality of the area even in the winter, I still expected to
take photos of at least a few snakes. Regrettably, that is not at all how
things went.
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| Packing my bags for the first time in 2022 |
Upon arrival, I flipped a trusty piece and found a beautiful
juvenile Greek slow worm under it. I thought this was probably a good omen, but
alas, as it would turn out, it was not.
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| Juvenile Anguis graeca |
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| Same |
I proceeded to visit several of my typical hiking and
flipping spots, with an escaped juvenile Hierophis being the only snake
reward of my endeavors. Nevertheless, I did find numerous common herps and
took a few minutes of my time to at least try to get some decent shots.
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| Greek smooth newt (one of over two dozen) |
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| Lacerta trilineata juvenile, uniform morph |
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| Striped morph |
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| Mediodactylus kotschyi - my first ever reptile found via peeking behind bark |
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| Greek smooth newt found under a log |
I ended the day with some night cruising in and around the
known spadefoot site and I actually did find one, most likely a female with
eggs, and I helped it cross. That was probably the highlight of the day. I also
saw several badgers and jackals crossing the roads, which is always enjoyable.
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| Pelobates balcanicus chloeae - a very high-profile and endangered taxon in need of more protection |
I slept in on day 2 and went to some flip sites. Sadly, they
were flooded, and on top of that, it started raining heavily so I gave up and
just waited until sundown to do a little frogging. My night cruising session
was very action-packed, the rain brought tons of animals out, especially
amphibians, and I cruised over a hundred live frogs and toads, as well as some
other downright weird stuff.
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| Road cruised a crab (Potamon cf. pelops) |
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| A glowing tree frog |
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| One more Pelo! |
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| One more Hyla! |
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| (in my opinion) my best Bufotes shot of the trip |
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| Bufotes collection. These are some of the individuals found across two nights. |
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| The only certain Pelophylax kurtmuelleri I photographed (alive). The one on the left has a very interesting aberrant dorsal stripe. |
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| Ambiguous Pelophylax. Most likely P. epeiroticus with some (most likely unnecessary) hybrid suspicions |
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| My favorite epeiroticus pic of the trip |
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| More Pelophylax epeiroticus. An interesting side note; the two big ones were found literally inside villages. |
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| 3 more tree frogs |
On day 3, I woke up late, checked out, and briefly hiked and
flipped a couple sites close to the hotel, though I only saw some Ionian and
Balkan green lizards which I sadly could not photograph. After I left, I
figured I should make a couple stops at random sites I found on google earth
that were on the way. The first one was a really wet abandoned olive grove with
tons of bramble, several abandoned buildings and seemingly endless refuges.
The only herps I found, however, were a couple of Hermann’s tortoises.
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| Pelophylax epeiroticus (in habitat for a change) |
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| Experimental shot of a T. hermannii male |
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| A flawless adult female Testudo hermannii |
The second site I stopped at looked extremely productive – a
huge, dry aggregation of artificial cover next to a flooded area with calling
green toads. I thought this was going to be it – I was finally going to get my
hands on a snake, but alas, I was aggressively kicked out by a farmer from a
nearby property and aggressive guard dogs. I was absolutely defeated, and after
a half-hearted attempt to find another site nearby, I started the long,
shameful drive home. As if I hadn’t gotten myself in enough regrettable
situations already, I almost ran out of gas on the way and had to get a partial
refill in Isthmia.
All in all, this trip was terrible, but looking back, I did
sort of have fun in a strange, almost masochistic way. In any case, I thought
that things would only go uphill from that point, which was far, far from the
case.
Chapter 4: heart of ice (epilogue)Much to everyone’s dismay, March was in no way, shape or
form the idyllic transitional month of high 60s temps and partly cloudy skies
that we had in mind, rather, it was cold. So cold, in fact, that it snowed! Right
as I got home we received overnights in the negative C, and we just kept
getting hammered by cold fronts (the worse being labeled “Phillip”). What would
normally have been an enjoyable herping month turned out to be essentially a
complete waste. As the weather warms up, only time will tell the what effects
these extreme circumstances will render.
Species seen:
Balkan frog (Pelophylax kurtmuelleri)
Epirus water frog (Pelophylax epeiroticus)
European tree-frog (Hyla arborea)
Chloe's spadefoot (Pelobates balcanicus chloeae)
Green toad (Bufotes viridis)
Greek smooth newt (Lissotriton graecus)
Hermann's tortoise (Testudo hermanni)
Marginated tortoise (Testudo marginata)
European glass lizard (Pseudopus apodus)
Greek sloworm (Anguis graeca)
Balkan green lizard (Lacerta trilineata)
Ionian wall lizard (Podarcis ionicus)
Kotschy's gecko (Mediodactylus kotschyi)
Ocellated skink (Chalcides ocellatus)
Snake-eyed skink (Ablepharus kitaibelii)
Eastern montpellier snake (Malpolon insignitus)
Balkan whip snake (Hierophis gemonensis)
