Conditions: Drizzling rain, quite windy.
Temperature : around 14 to 16 C
Time of observations: 17h00 to 19h00
I have to every day walk my dog, as many of you who follow my local observations may have noticed, but the area where I walk my dog has proven to be an extremely diverse zone for herpetofauna, more then any other area near my town, and this evening was just even more proof of this. It was dusk and there were heavy clouds and it was starting to rain, as I arrived at the furthest point of my walk, at a dry riverbed with an ancient roman bridge, I saw the same old stones as every day, but I had the feeling that today there may have been a Painted frog (Discoglossus pictus) under one particular stone, as I prepared myself to overturn the heavy slab shaped stone, I saw a wonderful large Fire Salamander (Salamandra salamandra), very surprised as I was in front of my first ever Fire Salamander, I realised my arms were starting to let go, so I removed the animal and put down the slab, extremely happy I took photos and realised very quickly that it was a pregnant female, possibly she had come down to the river to give birth before hibernating.
As I have found out many years ago, once you find one amphibian, it means that the conditions are close to ideal, and so with hopes for tones more Fire Salamanders, I overturned the large stones along 2 km or dry river bed, and as the light became too dim, I found a second Fire Salamander (Salamandra salamandra), this one was quite smaller and was a male.
In my area, it is the sub-species terrestris which is found - Salamandra salamandra terrestris.
Habitat where the first Fire Salamander (Salamandra salamandra) was found, just under the large stone in the bottom middle of the image - © Daniel Phillips
Female Fire Salamander (Salamandra salamandra terrestris) - © Daniel Phillips
Belly view of the same specimen, notice how large she is - due to her pregnancy - © Daniel Phillips
Same first female specimen - © Daniel Phillips
The second, smaller Fire Salamander (Salamandra salamandra terrestris), male & habitat - © Daniel Phillips
Closer up on the second specimen - © Daniel Phillips
