Grass Snakes 2010

Conditions seemed right for Grass Snakes to emerge here in north east Hampshire today - 12 C and, at least in the morning, bright sunshine, and the first butterflies of the year on the wing.  I searched at mid-day without apparent success at two local sites, the only hint of anything being a small patch of olive green at the base of some dead braken (less than a metre away from a basking Adder).  I had convinced myself that was nothing more than a couple of green leaves but on examing a photograph this evening this is what I found:

So the Grass Snake season has begun here, if a little unspectacularly!

I went to a site in the Mendips yesterday and saw 5 Grass snakes and 6 Adders, 4 Grass snakes in one location, possibly the hibernaculum.

Out today on the moors looking for adders, at one of their hibernation emergence where an adder was seen last spring I was surprised to come across an adult grass snake which quickly disappeared into cover. About 100 metres south a running lizard lizard drew attention to this stick in the bracken, which turned out to be a juvenile grass snake.


Edited by Chris Monk

First one of the year for me.

Originally counted this as one (couldn't / didn't want to get close), but there's two having a cwtch at the heathland restoration site in Sunday. In five years of monitoring we've only seen one grassie, but this year we've had 3 already.