Herpetological trip to South Portugal - April 2005

translated by Michael Duda

Day 7 - 23rd of April 2005

The eastern Algarve and the lower Guadiana- lots of highlights on the national feast day!

On the way to Faro we passed the new Algarve stadium, where also some games of the European football championship took place last year. Like in many other regions of the southern Algarve, white storks flew over the stadium. The farther one comes to the east, the more birds one can see. Other ornithological highlights were observations of short-toed eagle and Bonelli´s eagle. Besides we saw an incredible big amount of water birds, most of all at the national park Formosa near Faro, there we also found a European genet dead on the road.

The old town of Faro is full of pretty ancient houses and churches; we also could observe some pretty young girls (the cultural part of our journey), a species - Sorry, Portugal!- that seemed to be an endangered one in the rest of the investigated area. Of course we also made herpetological investigations. We could record one new species in Faro, the Red Eared Slider - Trachemys scripta elegans, a turtle, that has been released in many urban areas of Europe. Those "native Americans" seemed to feel well in the park and could perhaps become a serious threat for the native Herpetofauna of Portugal.

Eastern of Olhao in direction to Monte Gordo is the beginning of the distribution area of the European Chameleon- Chamaeleo chamaeleo. Thomas could watch a big horse shoe snake at the dunes of Monte Gordo after a few minutes, but the animal escaped to the bushes of the dunes. Short after that, Gerald announced by walkie- talkie, that he had found a chameleon. The pretty female showed us by changing her skin, that she was not amused by our photo - session. So we released the pregnant animal after a few minutes. Until yet it is not sure, if the Portuguese populations of the chameleon are natural or released ones. The European chameleon is (until yet) restricted to the coast land and the dunes of the southern Algarve, from where it spreads to the west(perhaps with human support). Although we kept on searching, we could not find (besides one C. bedriagai and lots of P.algirus) any additional chameleons, and so we decided to go on and explore the lower Guadiana..

We drove on to the north, were we stopped after a few kilometres at the little village of Castro Marim. After a short search at a locality with devastated stone walls we found the second gecko of Portugal - Hemidactylus turcicus - the Turkish Gecko , which is restricted to the eastern part of the Algarve in Portugal. As we already knew from other field trips at the Balkans, these little animals use to loose their tails, if one touches them - unfortunately this also happened to this specimen, as we turned a stone. For normal, the missing part will be regenerated without problems and after a few weeks the tail will be complete again. Totally motivated we drove on farther - so motivated, that Gerald forgot his leather glove and his jute bag. We were so sick by his mourning and complaining, that we promised to return to this place at the evening (we didn't know yet, that this would become the bull ´s eye)

Driving on to the north along the Guadiana until the northern border of the Algarve we found - just within one kilometer - one ladder snake and five Montpellier snakes driven over dead on the road near Foz de Odeleite - an observation, which made our Malpolon - lover Johannes very sad. So we went for one or two pints to Alcoutim - this little city, dominated by a castle is situated directly at the border to Spain and tries to outrun Sanluca at the other side of the border in brightness and pride. It is obvious, that these two countries are rival neighbours, although they are connected by a ferry. Many Spanish took the chance to visit their neighbours at their national feast day. The Portuguese on the other hand hung around totally tight in the few bars of the town - if they were celebrating the record of a rare snake?!

One of the most pretty areas, that we visited, was the totally unspoiled valley of the Foupana - we found about twenty - viperous snakes Natrix maura - there, the perhaps most common snake of Portugal, which we saw at almost every river and creek. Although we were already used to this animal, we were surprised by the big density of individuals; it showed us the big difference between unspoiled and devastated rivers. The viperous snake shows a big variability in colour and pattern, we found striped, spotted and even red specimen. One extreme red coloured animal vanished into the deeper parts pf the river, so we decided to dive for it. We were so fond of the gentle warm water, that we didn't want to stop splashing - but we had to go back for the lost leather glove.....

We arrived short before sunset. We tried to make our luck again, because we knew, that this was the best time for searching reptiles.

After a short search we found some Turkish geckos and a small amphisbaenian. All of a sudden we heard a cry for help - Thomas held the tail of an extreme big Horse Shoe Snake - Hemorrhois hippocrepis in his hand, and the rest of the team came for help. The front part of the snake stuck deep down in the stones, it was impossible to pull it out, otherwise we have had hurt the animal. So Hannes, Michael and Gerald had to dig very carefully for about 20 minutes, until we could take some photos. Thomas already caught a big horse shoe snake on the beach of Alvor the day before (the third specimen fled to the bushes in the morning)

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Pictures of amphibians & reptiles Gallery

day8: The resting day - walking on tourist paths

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