Herpetological trip to South Portugal - April 2005

translated by Michael Duda

4th Day - 20.04.2005

Sierra de Monchique - The roof of the Algarve

It was the main goal of our early start to the Mountains of Monchique to find as many amphibians as possible, because April is the main mating season of amphibians at the plateau of Foja, but we got disappointed again by the drought. All ponds and pools were dry, we just could observe a subadult eyed lizard on the ground of a former pond. After long and frustrating searches we could find at least one amphibian at a little well some 100m southern to the peak of the Foja (902m). It was a Bosca´s newt - Triturus boscai - we could observe this species only at few points, although it seemed to be one of the more common Portuguese amphibians. This small and unspectacular looking newt dwells most of all the hills and mountains along the Algarve, on some places it can be also found along the coast, like e.g. in Bordeira. .

Most of all the mountains are often afflicted by bushfires during summer. Big parts of the mountain forests burned down in 2003 and 2004. Until yet it is not sure, if amphibians and reptiles are directly threatened by the bushfires. The monocultures of eucalyptus, which are often planted after fires, seem to be a bigger thread.

During our sight - seeing tour around Monchique we also visited the convent. On its ruins we could observe lots of Moorish geckos and Algerian sand lizards. We also could observe the Iberian wall lizard - Podarcis hispanica cf. vaucheri (also called "type 2") - not at the convent, but on a stonewall down in the city. This so called "type 2" looks remarkable similar to the European wall lizards (Podarcis muralis), that we know very well from our native country Austria - in opposite to the so called "type 1" from the northern Iberian peninsula, which looks totally different. The Iberian wall lizard is suggested to be rare in southern Portugal - or perhaps they are simply overlooked, because we could find them in three different places.

Two of these localities were valleys northern to Monchique, which have been not recorded until our visit. The Iberian wall lizards prefer to dwell walls with only few holes - one can watch them staring out there. Walls, which are absolutely not pointed up , are "reigned" by the Moorish gecko. Perhaps the small lizard can not hold one's own against the bigger geckos. The Iberian wall lizard seems to be more shy in opposite to its central European relatives - but they are as curious like them. So it didn't take much time until they came out of their holes again and posed for some pretty photos.

After a short stop at the Seixe river, were we could observe another lizard, we drove back to the south and stopped at two additional places. On a terrace at about 500m altitude we saw our first amphisbaenian - Blanus cinereus. Christoph found the animal - that even tried to bite him - under a stone.

The Iberian species looks very similar to Blanus strauchi (look at the Rhodes report), but the three animals we found are definitely smaller than their relatives from the very eastern Mediterranean area. The main prey of this animal are slugs and worms. By the way: The big orange spanish slug (Arion lusitanicus resp. Arion vulgaris), which became a pest in many parts of central Europe, doesn't seem to be very common in Portugal - we just saw three or four specimen.

Our last stop was at a creek and a pond. Michael found a pretty specimen of the Montpellier snake, lots of terrapins and Iberian water frogs swam in the pond. We decided to visit this location again on a night excursion during the next days.

After this hard but interesting day we went for a short and refreshing swim to the pool of our quarter.

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Pictures of amphibians & reptiles Gallery

day5: The Seixe valley – Land of the water lizards

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