Croatian trip with my son

[Pierre-Yves Vaucher]

Hi eberybody... here is a little report of our uncessfully (or almost) trip in Croatia... weather was alwas kind, with only one day of Bura (Bora?), and a lot of day of south but quiet wind. Results: around zero.... the spring/summer aridity take reasons to not going out herps ....
Here is the link:
http://www.batraciens-reptiles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1394
My son will post some snorkling pictures as soon as he can...
Hope a little pleasure for you

[Berislav Horvatic]

Bura (Bora?)

"Bura" in Croatian, "bora" in Italian (and English).

des cyclamens à l'aube de l'automne... curieux...

But Cyclamen purpurascens does bloom at the beginning of autumn.

j'ai vu plusieurs fois cette magnifique fleur.. une idée ?

The blue flower is Campanula pyramidalis, for sure.

[Pierre-Yves Vaucher]

Thank's

[Gabriel Martínez]

Nice Pierre-Yves, Pseudopus in habitat is cool, and ammodytes are always fantastic!

[Guillaume Gomard]

The ammodytes are also my favorite, nice pictures! How many ammo did you see the last time you visited Krasno Polje ?

[Pierre-Yves Vaucher]

in may we saw 2 ammodytes for 4 hours, and now only one.

[Berislav Horvatic]

in may we saw 2 ammodytes for 4 hours, and now only one.

Well, I did recommend to you the best ammodytes site I know of, you just had bad luck.
Shit does happen, you know.
Also, I've noticed that actually nobody around here (in Croatia) boasts about their finds
this autumn... Last Saturday (29 Sept) our Mladen Zadravec visited his monitoring locality
for V. ammodytes (the same abandoned quarry at the outskirts of Zagreb we had been to
together with Frank last year) and he found just a single muralis AND NOTHING ELSE. Not
a single L. viridis, let alone a snake... You can imagine how he felt. Besides, it's the subject
of his diploma thesis, so he must catch the damn creepers in reasonable quantities - as many
as possible, IF possible...

[Pierre-Yves Vaucher]

the too dry waether from may is an explanation ?

[Berislav Horvatic]

the too dry waether from may is an explanation ?

In my opinion, any oversimplified one-step explanation like that just won't do. Not only in
this particular case, but almost never. The world IS complex and complicated, although
(hopefully) not unknowable...
As a matter of fact, in these particular latitudes autumn has always been rather disappointing
for fieldherpers. One finds mostly juveniles, if anything at all. (Just ask Mario about his own
experiences on Krk.) Lucky exceptions are both rare and loudly advertized, creating a wrong
impression regarding the normal, average state of the matter.
Last autumn, on the 29th of October 2011 Ivo Peranić & friends found 24 ammodytes in just
about three hours on the island of Pag - at the very same locality where we had found none
on the 23rd and 24th of May. But it was a very special day, and that's it. It will most probably
never happen again.

[Mladen Zadravec]

Empusa pennata (?)

Actually, it should be Empusa fasciata. Always lovely to see these guys!

Last Saturday (29 Sept) our Mladen Zadravec visited his monitoring locality
for V. ammodytes (the same abandoned quarry at the outskirts of Zagreb we had been to
together with Frank last year) and he found just a single muralis AND NOTHING ELSE. Not
a single L. viridis, let alone a snake... You can imagine how he felt. Besides, it's the subject
of his diploma thesis, so he must catch the damn creepers in reasonable quantities - as many
as possible, IF possible...

Usually, my autumn field trips would be only somewhat better than those during the hottest parts of the summer, but this time it's worse....