Today I achieved a lifetime's ambition by seeing a pair of adders in the wild. September is a good time for spotting snakes in England, as the weather has begun to get a little cooler and they are more sluggish. Although adders are poisonous, and a bite should always be treated seriously, there have only been 12 deaths from adder bites in the last 100 years. Snakes are far more frightened of people than we realise, and they will escape at the first opportunity.
I do like reptiles; I think they're really beautiful, and when, eventually, these two slithered off it looked as though someone had poured them away like water. Adders in England hibernate each winter, and a lot of them may use the same place. They don't lay eggs; they give birth to live young.There are two very good websites I can recommend:
http://www.crislis.co.uk/adder/index.htm
And I've just discovered that snakes don't hibernate, they brumate... For information on this and diapause, estivation, and torpor, go to
No comments:
Post a Comment