Today I visited my regular spot for Adders (Vipera berus) as males usually start their activity around this time if there is sufficient sunshine and a slight increase in temperature. The weather was cold and wet and after hours of searching I found nothing, eventually after spending all day (7 hours!!!!) in the field I found two male adders. The first of 2012! Some other interesting observations from the day were several Deer, and a sadly dead on road Badger.

Additionally, by comparing photos of specimens from this site I have seen this male before, in April last year, but quite far from where he was today.

On Thursday night the weather was very mild and drizzling so I thought this could trigger the explosive breeding  of Common frogs at a pond in my village. This results in carnage as they pile out of a drystone wall and into the road. Thankfully this is a country road so not too much traffic, but it only takes one car to kill dozens of them. However, on this occasion they had not yet emerged, but instead I found about 30 Palmate newts (Lissotriton helveticus) crossing the road to the pond, I of course moved them all and only one had been run over.