I have just come back from our family holydays in the Ardeche-Mountains. This was in fact not a herping trip but....
. In this region the Cevennes, Massif Central and the plains of the Rhone-Valley come together, which makes an interesting mix of mediterranean and central european fauna as well as climate. When we arrived it was 37°C in the late afternoon - and that was it for the next 10 days. As you can imagine I did not expect to many views of herptiles and just concentrated my observations on areas near water and to montainous regions.One of our home bases was the Lignon river with its impressive basaltic canyons. Here are some impressions of the place and what I have found:
- Podarcis muralis merremius -juvenile
- P.m. merremius or what else??
- Wall Lizard - female
- wall Lizard - male
- another male
The other lizard-species was L. bilineata. First I only found a young female together with N. maura and wall lizards on one square-meter in the late afternoon - all of them hidden under vegetation:
Another male I found a few days later near the same place. It was escapeing into the water and diving away
! On our last visit of the place, after two days of rain and decline of temperature - I could observe a young bilineata swimming across a big pool elegantly. After that the adults came out - one big male and 3 female climbing around and basking together in thorny thicket. On the base of the bush I could see subadults disappearing.It was a strange scenery: lizards swimming and diving and on the other hand there was a fish escaping from my footsteps out of the water, awaiting my disappearence on a wett pebble:
And of course: N. maura ambushing for prey:
Amphibians in the Lignon river:
- Bufo bufo cf. spinosus
- Pelophylax tadpole
In another small canyon a bit in the north of the Lignon I - surprisingly- could find Bombina variegata (this place is out of the so far known radiation in France!), some bufo toadlets and wall lizards.
- IMG_3249-bombina_bauch_kl.jpg (320.37 KiB) Viewed 2955 times
I will show you some more stuff in a second part.
Enjoy!
Wolfram
