Herpetological trip to South Portugal - April 2005

translated by Michael Duda

2nd day - 18th of April 2005 The southern coast - The biggest lizards of Europe

On the second day we decided to search for rests of nature on the southern coast. Although it is an extreme built up area, there are still rests of natural estuaries and ancient cultivated landscape. The heavy thunderstorms announced at the weather forecast were just a slight drizzle with moderate temperatures about 18° Celsius. Most of all under this conditions it is hard to say, which species could be found. The Southern smooth snake - Coronella girondica is known to be found at moist weather. Udo Schwarzer found most of the animals he had seen during rain, sometimes during thunderstorms and even in winter.

We could not find this snake during our stay. If we had known, that this was the last day with moist weather conditions, we would have been searching for amphibians. Michael became "man of the first stone", because as he turned his first stone on the second day, he found the only adult specimen of the Eyed lizard - Timon lepidus, the biggest lizard of Europe, that we could observe on our trip.

It was obviously too cold for these lizards, we also could find some subadult specimen, but all hidden under stones and totally stiff.

Our next stop was at the estuary of the Rio de Vale Barao - a coastland with extensive marshes. As mentioned above, moisture and water had been a big problem in spring 2005 - as a result, a big amount of water birds collected around the remaining pools and ponds. There we found a specimen of the Spanish newt - Pleurodeles waltl, which Johannes discovered under a stone near the water. We were impressed by its (in comparison to other European newts and salamanders enormous) size - it was a pregnant female, waiting for rain to start mating and egg-laying.

We would have had expected to find more Spanish newts in wells or cisterns, but because of the unusual low ground-water level (5- 10 meter under the normal level, another result of the drought) this source was out of reach for us.

We also could not find any specimen of the second big newt of this area - the Marbled newt - Triturus (marmoratus) pygmaeus, although we had been at the few pools, were this species has been recorded.

Afterwards rain ended and the sun rose again, so we tried to make our luck at searching for reptiles on a dry mount nearby. Besides some three Toed skinks - Calcides striatus and Iberian ocellated skinks - Chalcides bedriagai, we could observe our second false smooth snake. The animal found by Gerald also inhabited a poor, dry area - were the false smooth snake has perhaps less concurrence of bigger snakes.

On that day we also visited some lonely coastlands of the southern Algarve, were we spent the burning hot midday. At this season one can find lots of deserted beaches and cliffs - it feels like a no man's land.

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