Herpetological trip to South Portugal - April 2005

translated by Michael Duda

5th Day - 21.4.2005

The Seixe valley - Land of the water lizards

Guided by Udo Schwarzer we went to the Seixe valley, which inhabits one of the best known populations of the Iberian green lizard. Just short before we visited some ponds, where we suspected rare amphibians, and decided to return there for a night excursion.

The ponds of this area were all filled well with water and they showed an impressing diversity of different plants - flowering iris, orchids and lots of different water plants.

Already on our first stop we saw the first Iberian green lizards - Lacerta schreiberi sitting exposed to the sun on a piece of wood near the creek. The mating season was already going on, so we could observe mating males near to every females; we also saw many couples, which seemed to be quite unimpressed by the observation of us herpetomaniacs. Sub adult specimens were driven away to localities more far away from the water by the elder animals. The lizards prefer Creeks and rivers with permanent water, they can never be found far away from floating water. Another indication of L. schreiberi is alders - Alnus glutinosa along the rivers. In south Portugal these trees are always restricted to floating water. At the first glance L. schreiberi looked similar to the green lizard (Lacerta viridis), that we knew from Austria . But there are some distinguishing differences: Most of all the juveniles show an intensive pattern on the back, which can not be found at juveniles of L. viridis . But also the olive green, intensive black spotted back of the adults looks quite different.

On our search along some smaller creeks we found -besides some thousands of water frogs- a specimen of the Iberian painted frog- Discoglossus galganoi . We also saw one Iberian parsley frog- Pelodytes ibericus - unfortunately he didn't wait, until we could make a photo. The Iberian painted frog was a sub adult specimen of the spotted sort, so it was hard to separate him from the big mass of the water frogs. Although we kept on searching, we couldn't find other specimen of these two amphibians. In years with normal moisture they are quite common, but because of the drought most of the amphibians were hidden deep down in the soil - a shower of rain would have been the ultimate help for our search! Also the quite common local subspecies of the Spotted salamander - Salamandra salamandra cespoi seemed to be vanished, but Udo found at least one tadpole in the more quiet regions of a creek. Perhaps we should have been driving to this area during the first days, when it still had been raining.

Our expedition went on with the search for two specimens of the European pond turtle - Emys orbicularis. We thought, that we would have been seeing them lying exposed to the sun at the riverside. Unfortunately our "mud divers" Hannes and Udo couldn't find them - so it was quite unsure if id had been specimen oft the European pond turtle or the more common Spanish terrapin. After all, we still could make some interesting photos of Hannes and Udo. Hey guys, how could was the water!?

21.4. und 24.4.

Night excursions bring al lot of surprises

After an excellent dinner at a fish restaurant in Aljezur we waited for the dawn , until frogs started to call . We could already hear the characteristic call of the Mediterranean tree frog - Hyla meridionalis from far away. Wolfgang found the first specimen after a few minutes. But suddenly - while Wolfgang and Christof started to take some photos, which should show the differences between the Mediterranean and the European tree frog- we heard a call, that we all knew very well. It was a single male of the European tree frog - Hyla arborea moelleri. We had been at the absolute most southern border of the tree frog. Udo told us, that it was great luck, that we found this specimen. The estimated relation of H. meridionalis to H. arborea is about 100:1 in this area!

It took us lots of time, until we found the "lonely fighter", because every time, when we came closer, he stopped calling and did not start again until we moved some meters away. At least we managed to take some photos of these two squabblers - it seemed, as if they would not like each other. The legs of the Mediterranean tree frog are longer, his body is more slim. The most distinguishing differences are the lack of the black ribbon at the haunch and - of course- the different mating call (H. meridionalis sounds like "craa-craa-craa", H. arborea like "rapraprapraprap").

Although we watched the specimen of Hyla arborea moelleri very exact, we couldn´t find the any distinguishing differences to Hyla arborea arborea . In the second pond we saw a big tadpole of the spanish newt.

Two days later we went on a night excursion at the south of the sierra de Monchique. It was the river valley, where we made had our last stop on the fourth day. Besides lots of Mediterranean tree frogs we could observe a hatchling and an adult specimen of the Spanish terrapin. A very big tadpole swam into our net - the determination was quite difficult - it could have been an Iberian midwife toad.

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