Herpetological trip to South Portugal - April 2005

translated by Michael Duda

Impressed by a short trip of Johannes Hill and Thomas Bader to Portugal in the summer of 2004, a team of seven herpetomaniacs (mainly the core staff of www.herpetofauna.at ) decided to go on a 10- days trip to the Algarve for watching an recording amphibians and reptiles. The participants were Karl Bilek, Wolfgang Simlinger, Christoph Riegler, Thomas Bader, Johannes Hill, Michael Duda and Gerald Ochsenhofer.

After our flight (including a turbulent intermediate stop in Mallorca) to Faro we drove with our rental cars to our accommodation in Alvor. There we had our "headquarter" for the next 10 days - a big house with pool, kitchen, living room an 5 dormitories.

On this evening we could make our first observation - a driven over Montpellier snake.

During dinner we contacted Udo Schwarzer, an acquaintance of Johannes Hill. Udo joined us for some days at field work and showed us some wonderful, untouched landscape sites.

1 st day - 17 th of April 2005

The dunes of Carrapateira - Land of the false smooth snake

Udo Schwarzer is the ultimate connoisseur of the western Algarve. The German immigrant owns together with his wife Claudia an office of landscape architecture(www.biopiscinas.pt), which is specialized on the creation and management of natural swimming ponds and biological purification plants. His house is situated in the nature reserve of Alante jano. Udo knows most of the plants and animals living there - the rests of this dune area are still absolutely intact habitats and dwelled by a very specialized Herpetofauna.

So we began our first trip to the dunes starting to turn some stones beside the way and - surprise- Michael found a young Ladder snake - Rhinechis scalaris- under the first stone. It was a pretty coloured juvenile. Adults show a less impressive

In general the morning and the late afternoon were the best times to find reptiles, most of all snakes, wile only few species and specimen could be recorded during midday.

One of the species, that we could find also during midday was the Moorish gecko - Tarentola mauretanica - , one of the most common species in the investigated areas and an important prey for snakes. We mainly observed these geckos on rocks, stone walls, wood- piles and old houses - in big cities we could make significant less observations of this species.

The Moorish geckos of southern Portugal are diurnal and nocturnal as well. They even can be found exposed to the sun during burning hot midday heat, while other reptiles are already vanished in more cool and moist hiding places.

The second species, that occured quite common on many different sites, was the Algerian sand lizard Psammodromus algirus - but we could not find these species in such high densities like other common lizards on our former field trips in Croatia, Greece or Italy.

Most of all courting males look very impressive with their orange throats and blue lateral spots

Wile we went up the dunes, we mainly searched for the extreme rare false smooth snake and its preys; the most important are the Spanish sand lizard Psammodromus hispanicus - relative to Psammodromus algirus - and Blanus cinereus , the amphisbaenian.

Unfortunately both species are as hard to find as their predator and we could not take a photo yet.

As Karl Bilek found a False smooth snake - Macroprotodon (cucullatus) brevis after long and difficult searches - we already thought, that this would be the ultimate highlight of our journey.

This small snake dwells extreme poor and dry areas, were it can be found under small, flat stones. The one we found was already an "old acquaintance" of Udo. Each specimen of the false smooth snake can be recognized by an individual pattern on its ventral side. Udo could recognize the 39 cm long animal by comparing photos, which he has made during his monitoring project. An distinguishing mark of this species is the black stripe across the neck. The animals of the Iberian peninsula (Macroprotodon brevis) have been separated as an own species from those of north Africa (Macroprotoden cucullatus) just short time before.

Afterwards we left the hardened soil of the elder dunes and walked down to the younger, sandy dunes, were still some water should have been left- in normal years.

Caused by the greatest drought since 50 years all the ponds and pools were absolutely dry. This is the reason why we generally had big problems to find any amphibians during our journey.

Because of the slight drizzle we could find some specimen of the Natterjack - Bufo calamita - after turning some pieces of wood and plastic. The distinguishing marks, that makes it possible to separate the Natterjack from other European toads, are the bright stripe along the spine and the special way of movement: they never jump (like other frogs and toads) but run like mice. One animal showed very untypical behaviour: it was digged under a piece of wood lying on its back.. When we visited this site some days later, we could not find any toads again. We also supposed the Iberian spade foot - Pelobates cultripes - to live in this area, but could not make any observations.

On the way back to our cars we crossed a meadow covered with dense grass - the habitat of the Three toad skink- Chalcides striatus.

On the first glance they look like slow- worms, but they are much quicker! Some years ago the western form Chalcides striatus was separated as an own species from Calcides chalcides .

The rudimental legs with only three toes and the stripes on the back are distinguishing marks of this species. Like many other lizards they use to throw off their tails in case of predation attacks.

Recapitulating the observations of the first day, we could already record 4 species of amphibians and 10 of reptiles.

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Pictures of amphibians & reptiles Gallery

day2: The biggest lizards of Europe

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