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 ;-)