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Tirol

Details: Published: 11 November 2013

As written before, this year I also joined two orthopteromaniac-friends on their quest to fill gaps in the distribution maps of grasshoppers in Austria. So we went more or less across whole Tirol, they looking for grasshoppers and me mainly finding the grasshoppers they were looking for ;-) The master-tool for finding some certain species of grasshoppers is a bat detector, which shifts the ultrasound noises that bats and some grasshoppers make to a frequence audible also to humans. So with bat detector turned off, at some species you're hearing nothing. And when you turn the device on, you are suddenly realising that there are quite some of them around. Here a link to one of the species (Barbitistes serricauda) we were looking for with quite some effort. The noises you hear are mainly from two species and if you look properly, you can see the wings moving a bit to the "clicking" type of stridulation (to stridulate = the process of creating the sound grasshoppers make). You wouldn't hear those clicking sounds without the bat detector. Besides the grasshoppers I had time to test my new tripod, play a bit with light refractions and click stuff I'm usually not so focussed on. Here a small selection!

Here one of the main actors we were looking for - Barbitistes obtusus, those holes on the feet are their "ears".


Sempervivum montanum(?).	Epipactis palustris with ..hm.. need to look it up.

That's a defocussed waterdrop from the right angle. I think I spent at least half an hour there..	And that's pure luck! Coincidental a (really) tiny spider sat in the focus plane.
Fleshly metamorphosed Rana temporaria.	And the tadpoles from the same species.

Yay! Vipera ammodytes.

Aeshna juncea.

updates..!

Details: Published: 08 November 2013

Soo.. here the first minor update.

During summer we were visiting some typical lowland-areas in eastern Austria, namely Moosbrunn, the Seewinkel between Hungary and Lake Neusiedl and, apart from that, Kaisersteinbruch. Target of the first two places have been lowland-populations of the Common Lizard (Zootoca vivipara), whose german name is "Bergeidechse" (Mountain-Lizard). According to its german name, one can usually expect it somewhere in the mountains - and in the most cases one will also find it there. But there are some exceptions in the moist flatland areas of Austria (and Hungary for example), where you can find it in completely flat areas. The reason why it lives there is moisture - in flatlands this lizard is bound to very moist areas, like swamps or flooded grasslands, and that stuff you can find in the Seewinkel or in Moosbrunn. Formally it had a much wider distribution, mainly in the eastern parts of lower austria those habitats were wide-spread, but due to stupid draining/melioration that's history.

As written we were also at Kaisersteinbruch, which is quite the oppisite of that moist flatlands, namely a very dry querry standing idle. There it's possible to find for example the green lizard (Lacerta viridis) or the praying mantis (Mantis religiosa).

Green Toad (Bufo viridis)	Iridescence on a snake skin
Green lizard (Lacerta viridis), male, in summer they lose the bright blue coloration of the throat	A female of those lowland Common Lizard (Zootoca vivipara), formally subsp. pannonica

And here a small preview from our glorious grasshopper-search in Tirol in summer..!

PS: If that internal server sh.. error message still pops up, pls try to reload the page ;-)

Croatia Spring 2013

Details: Published: 24 June 2013

..long time no see.. this spring i've been on four excursions - the first was taking place in Croatia on Cres, and from there it went on to the island Pag and then the vicinity of lake Vrana. On Cres I've been invited to join the annual excursion of BIUS (again -- a really huge thanks a lot to Senka, Boris & crew!!), a really amazing trip. Great people (besides, approx 100 students!), perverted jokes 24/7 (even though it seems that I unfortunately missed the best part cause I left some days earlier to join the ÖGH-excursion), loads of animals, a littlebit island-jumping -- everything what a herpetophilic and nonetheless social heart desires! Only my croatian-"knowledge" backfired a bit, cause with not speaking/hearing croatian for more than half a year, but everyone knowing that i know something, it was quite hard to follow conversation. Due to lack of space i didn't have my "compensation"-camera equipment (the "the longer your lens, the shorter your penis"-theory still requires a bigger sample size..) with me, so i was quite restricted in making in-situ-shots. Therefore the amount of pictures from Cres, Unije and Susak is quite small, so I'm putting here only a few of them.
The first one, cause for it i nearly got thrown off the island and fed to the fish, cause i made an in-situ picture of viridiflavus before hm.. being to clumsy to catch it (which would have been good, cause we needed samples). But anyway, here it is, my i think first in-situ pic of a viridiflavus :-) !

And the second one cause now i know what it really means to be the head of the croatian society of herpetology!

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No, that one's not hungry, it's just the lizard kind of foreplay, not so much cuddling included here..

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After the BIUS-Trip i went to Rijeka and from there via Trajekt-ferry to Pag, which was amazingly fast, only approx. 2,5 hrs including a stop on i-forgot-the-name-island. On Pag the group of the austrian society of herpetology was already waiting and we went directly on into the fields. Christoph also took care of my compensation-equipment, and so i could devote myself to my more and more growing fetish, the in-situ-photography.
The first picture was taken on Pag island and is the one i'm the most happy about. It shows one of the Hierophis-genus (to which also belongs the snake on the first picture, Hierophis viridiflavus), namely Hierophis gemonensis. On german the Hierophis-snakes are called "Zornnattern" (~angry snakes), which refers more or less very well to their behaviour and mindset. So it's quite hard to get some in-situ shots and even harder to approach with a wide-angle lens. And this nice snake wasn't only letting me close, but also climbed directly in front of me (!) on the top of a stonewall and stayed there long enough to even change the lenses. Of course it took a veeery slow approach, which also meant, that all the other guys were thinking about leaving me on the island (besides i couldn't answer the radio calls, cause i feared that one wrong movement makes the snake to shoot off), but i think it was worth it.

And here a close-up with 300mm (one of dozends..)

After Pag we went on to lake Vrana, hoping to find more species there. Unfortunately, to sum it up, no real highlights (for example the last time we found a cat- and a leopardsnake [and at this moment i realise, that both snakes are named after their greatest enemies - the cats.. funny.., even though this was obviously not the intention], which are both rarely found (.. but that doesn't neccessarily mean, that they're actually rare). Anyhow, with no highlights, more time to click lizards -- yay!!

Blue-throated Keeled Lizard, female	Very likely Dalmatian Wall Lizard, male
Blue-throated Keeled Lizard, male	Balkan green lizard, juvenile, for the attractive adults see below.

As mentioned before -- here's the adult version of the Balkan Green Lizard, a big relative of "our austrian" Smaragdeidechse. About this pic i'm nearly as same as happy as about the Hierophis pics before, cause macro-shots of Balkan Green Lizards are also quite hard to make without disturbing them.

And as far as this one is a female, i couldn't resist to take some pictures from the back. I just hope I don't get sued for putting it on the internet..

After lake Vrana and vicinity, we went on the last day near Zadar, in short, same same but same, anyhow, after quite some rain the days before, lizards were out basking again. On the left, an Italian Wall Lizard, the most common lizard in the coastal areas, especcially close to and in settlements. And on the right the stuff you start to click when nothing else is out, due to cold or due to rain or due to other reasons, which often fill hours of discussion -- never leading to the unveiling of the biggest secret of field herpetology: "why is XY not out even though the habitat looks perfect and the weather is even perfect-er".