I am certainly among those to blame with a ton of unfinished - or even unstarted - reports lying around from the past nearly three years. You might think that the coronafication of society would leave ample time to catch up on writing and ordering photos but alas no. Danish spring has been absolutely beautiful this year and since our lock down is not as strict as in some other countries it has instead presented the perfect opportunity to get out and enjoy our local nature even more - whether hardcore herping by myself or just enjoying the landscapes, flora, general fauna and occasional herps with my family.
In this manner I have found nearly all that Denmark has to offer this past month, adders of all colours and ages across a number of sites, grass snakes, slow worms, lizards, newts, and a multitude of breeding anurans, including among others blue arvalis and night time fun with green toads on the harbour and natterjacks among the dunes.
The absolute highlight of my season so far was a rather surprising daytime anuran encounter though. As elsewhere in the north western parts of its range, common spadefoots are anything but here in Denmark. Disappearing at an alarming rate since the 2nd world war they are now spread out quite thinly in isolated small populations. Thankfully one of these is within easy driving distance of my home. I had already been on a succesful night time excursion a couple of weeks ago when I found myself nearby again a few days later searching for reptiles. I figured conditions were ideal for a rare glimpse of diurnal spadefoot activity so I made an impromptu stop at the breeding ponds.
This proved a great decision as I soon found 2 males in one of the two ponds. Even better, at the second pond an amplexed couple had just started twirling their eggs around the vegetation, oblivious to their surroundings. I stood right next to them for about 8 minutes enjoying the spectacle until it was all over, then moved on with a smile on my face.
All in all a perfect afternoon with not just the spadefoots but a total of 11 species, including all of our reptiles, and adders of all colours, melanistic, brown, and stunning turqouise silver male.
Here's the full album of spadefoot mating pics:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/68696787@ ... 3969326361
...and a random sample:
