Font Romeu - June 6th 2006

6th June - Font Romeu (dept. 66)

Swiss friend Konrad Mebert (Webshot photo gallery) drove up from Spain and came to my area again and we herped around my place for a bit and then decided to get higher and look for the missed species in Ariège: Vipera aspis zinnikeri.

And so Font Romeu sprang to mind and we started the road trip up there, it took about 1h 30 to 2h to get up there and it became much cooler in temperature once we were there compared to the lower lands and coast. We searched for about 4 hours with nothing but Podarcis muralis, but the conditions were good, sun, no wind, cool temperature, some cloud cover every now an again... We found some tadpoles, maybe Rana temporaria? Turning over wood and rocks with no viper luck, but we found many weird looking insects and a Anguis fragilis.

It was starting to cool down, not because of the clouds but because it was getting late, we carried on searching and getting chased by cows until we found one! A Vipera aspis zinnikeri, what luck, I didn't think we would find it after all that bad luck. But unfortunately he had his blue eye and so the photos don't show very well his slit cat like vertical pupil.

On the way home we also found a huge 1.6 m long Malpolon monspessulanus at around 550 meters in altitude near the town of Serdinya.

Observed specie: 5