Herpetological trip to South Portugal - April 2005

translated by Michael Duda

10th and last day 26 th of April 2005

Searching for Acanthodactylus - Last minute highlight!

On the last day we started a bigger tour to the north at the beaches of Troja, where lots of Acanthodactylus had been recorded. We reached the south end of Troja after two hours driving, started immediately to search at different localities and caught some extra large P. algirus . The big hotel complexes of this area had obviously never been in use - the windows are broken, and the buildings already look like ruins. Additionally the army patrols around there all the time. During our search at the beaches and pine forests Hannes found a bath tube with 6 lizards in there. - but they where just some more Algerian sand lizards, which couldn't find a way out of the tube. We freed the animals and kept on searching for Acantodactylus erythrurus - the spiny footed lizard . After all we could watch at least two animals, but because of their high distance of flight and their enormous speed we couldn't take a photo. It didn't seem to us, if this species was very common in this area. We had been very disappointed about that, because the spiny footed lizard was the only reason for us to drive to the north. The only interesting thing about this area was the sandy soil with only few vegetation and poor pine forests reaching quite far inland.

We drove back to the south and had been totally convinced, that this was the end of our field trip 2005. But we had been much quicker back than expected, so we decided to keep on searching for amphibians and snakes at an area near Pincho at the Serra de Esinaco - an area, that Udo recommended.

It was about half past four, as we arrived there and went form the car to a little creek. All of a sudden Hannes wanted to grab for a snake, but suddenly he withdrew: it was Vipera latasti - Lataste´s viper!

At the first glance this snake looks similar to the nose- horned viper, just the number of squamas on the head is different. The zigzag pattern on the back is framed by a dark stripe - a characteristic mark for a male specimen.

Only very few vipers had been caught alive in the Algarve , therefore this observation has been something very special. We informed Udo Schwarzer, who joined us just half an our, after he left a conference. Some days later the animal had been examined by José Carlos Brito - a Portuguese specialist for vipers and was set free again on the place, were it had been found. We all hope for new scientific findings about this snake, which is quite rare in southern Portugal . Wir alle erhoffen uns neue Erkenntnisse über die in Südportugal so seltene Schlange. We also would like to see it, that the perception of humans about snakes and their behaviour against these animal would change.

After this last minute highlight we went for some beer celebrating the end of our fascinating field trip. After our departure we flew right across the place, were we had found the chameleon, and with woefulness we looked down at the estuary of the Guadiana ..

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