As mentioned before, because of my CFS condition I am limited to uploading old pictures – and that at very slow pace.

This time they're from an excursion to the surroundings of lake vrana in Croatia, back in 2010, which I did with some fellows from the Austrian Herpetological Society (ÖGH, the majority also belonging to the herpetofauna.at-Team).

I cannot remember much, but these ÖGH field trips are usually nice and relaxed, with a good balance of searching/photographing animals and relaxing together over a beer or coffee. And based on the excursion participants it can only have been a very nice time 🙂
 

The big highlight of a Balkans trip, and usually very hard to find: Zamenis situla / Leopardnatter / leopard snake

 

A quite common find in Croatia: Euscorpius sp., a group of small, +/- harmless scorpions

And here a heap of other pictures from that field trip 🙂

Dear single monthly visitor (excluding bots),

As you can see, I haven't posted in a long time. The unfortunate reason is that I am sick with CFS, have been struggling with it for over a year now, and am still very limited in my activities.

Because of that, excursions are not possible and therefore I cannot provide new stories or pictures.

So, the only thing left is to sometimes post old pictures that I haven’t uploaded so far. I’m actually doing this also for myself, because then I can happily look back to those nice moments.

Let’s start with a picture that’s 19 years (omg) old. One of the animals I always wanted to see in its natural habitat – the meadow viper / Wiesenotter / Vipera ursinii. Here from the subspecies macrops, photographed in Croatia. Back then I was, well, less worried about things, and luckily that speciemen had a quite calm disposition. 

And a panorama picture of the habitat where it was found.

I hope I can give you an update soon, may it be something old or new. ☺️

This year, 10 years have passed since one of the most interesting and intense excursions I’ve participated in so far. Three weeks of travel through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in the company of a very cool group of mainly German students. Mostly sleeping in tents, enduring temperatures far below zero, and shortly after that seeing quite a few interesting herp species – it was a really special trip. And as I can’t do excursions in the near future (see here), I thought I’d warm this topic up again to bring back some nice memories – and maybe some of you haven’t seen the pictures yet.

To read the trip reports, click on the pictures below!

Kazakhstan I
Kazakhstan II	Kyrgyzstan

This time, as the random song reference at the end of the article, something for dance-/electropop fans: Laika Party!
I still can't believe that song didn't even make it into the finals!

And the one and only song if you ever travel between Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan and Almaty in Kazakhstan: От Бишкека до Алма-Аты (From Bishkek to Almaty)