RAUK - Archived Forum - 1st mating ball of 2008

Hi guys,

Spotted first mating ball fo the year today, 10am 14 deg C full sun, five members taking part at Holyfield Lake. Also viv looking very hungry by the folds in its skin

Mark hi,

Well, I'm hoping that the sudden turn to cold again hasn't killed the group in the photo. I mean thursday, tee shirt weather, then snow on the sunday, its mad. This has been the strangest March/April that I can remember.

Rob

hey Keith,

thanks mate. You know what? I saw another pair of grasssies mating today and it was bloody freezing in the wind. Amazing and weird indeed. It was that cold that my lens became very stiff in manual op - no exageration. Slow worms are worth seeing though, I haven't caught sight of one of those this year.

Rob

Rob,

What sort of terrain do you see all these grassies in? I rarely see grass snakes except under tins.

Suz,

Its difficult to quantify really. Like you said in another post somewhere about the new forest, they turn up in the most surprising of places, but if I had to point to one common feature in all, its mainly where its difficult to get to. Somewhere where the average dog walker is not going to go - and lets face it, theres not many of those places is there. i remember I was waliking through EF once and was going through heavy wooded area just so that I could get to another more open site at Connaught Waters, when I saw a solitary fallen log in a sun trap between trees covered in old bracken and moss and some grass and a single holly bush and a rabbits burrow beneath the log. As I went to walk past it, there were eight grass snakes in a ball!

How they all got there and found each other is anyones guess ( I suupose their scent does carry a bit! lol), so get off the beaten track and mind your shins, those bloody brambles are murder!

Rob

Suz,

if you see one slide off, remember where you saw it, walk off and keep searching, but then come back to the exact same place in an hour or two, but creep in from a different direction. Try and keep the breeze so it comes over the place where you saw it before it blows to you. As you probably know they have an amazing sense of smell, but you can fool them.

I get scratched up a lot and I don't get close up shots, but, I get near enough to see whats going on.

hey,

I dopped into the mendips over the weekend, look what I found - not

R

Rob,

What are you trying to say exactly?

Paul

[QUOTE=armata]Is it because she is thin and may have laid eggs already?[/QUOTE]

Maybe she was one that mated in the autumn...?

Tony,

hardly likely I'm afraid. the reason she is thin (well spotted by the way) is that this wasn't the mendips (bit of a dig there0, it was the Reptilliary nr lyndhurst on the A35. I asked the keepers to stock the pond with fish as it was looking so emaciated and obviously not eaten for a while!

Paul, I suppose what I'm saying is that the photo above was taken with a canon ixus compact 2.3 megapixel camera without zoom facility (the sort you'd take to the beach on your hols) and I think you'll probably agree I could have passed it off as a "wild" shot, when in fact it's a captive snake. You'll also probably agree that given that fact, you can see why i would think there are others on here produced the same way?

cheers

Tony,

by the way, female slowie x 2 below the tin nearest the gate, and the lizard in the commons section dropped into a picnic, which we had to abandon because of those MASSIVE ants! Man, they can bite! Lol

Rob

Rob,

If you want to persue this don't forget to start a new thread!

Paul