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First Tripera berus: |
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ben rigsby Senior Member Joined: 27 Apr 2010 No. of posts: 337  View other posts by ben rigsby |
Posted: 21 Jun 2010 i know youre probably sick of my anecdotes. well click away or post yourself if youre not happy and stop complaining. you have the same opportunity as i do to use the site. tell us all about sand lizards, smooth snakes, pool frogs and wall lizards, your opinions, your gardens or anything. thats what we're all here for surely? to learn and share. im all ears. POST, POST, POST! anyway, following on from keiths "first....smooth snake" heres MY first adder. lets hear your case studies and help keep our beloved site fresh. when i was a small boy my grandmother would visit every sunday and after lunch she, my sister and i would walk up to nearby MINCHINHAMPTON COMMON and enjoy an ice cream. any weather. most weekends. nice rural setting. lovely. we would always try to take a different route home afterwards for interests sake. which as you can imagine involved a lot of thinking after a while when you'd catalogued every possible local public footpath, lane or thoroughfare over weeks, months, years. anyhoo, one day we returned via a quiet country lane where i found a completely squashed flat and dry VB specimen. less than a year old i would guess. about 6" long. i had never seen a native snake at that point (though i HAD seen slow-worms) but i worked out what it was from remembering M Smiths description/pix and also by noting its clearly visible fangs. i readily picked it up and put it in the brown paper bag proffered from my grans handbag. i kept that "pressed snake" for ages afterwards. in a shoe box which also contained slow-worm skin, rabbit fur, acorns and mouldy bits of mushroom. a right nerd even then. and anal. totally against the odds (as a first specimen ever sighted) the adder i found was almost black in colour. (though you could easily see the zigzag on closer inspection). as a result i mistakenly believed all VB babies were black in colour for years afterwards. my first adder was a "black" adder. and you cant beat BLACKADDER. what say you? ben ben Diversity. |
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dave fixx Senior Member Joined: 13 Mar 2007 No. of posts: 319  View other posts by dave fixx |
Posted: 22 Jun 2010 OK Ben ,I will spill the beans if your going to nag.  Well I was seven years old and was out on my first ever herping expedition with a friend of my brothers who was 12 and had been roped into taking me the five miles to this particular site.There were plenty of lizards to see basking on the fence and I was in my element having never seen a wild reptile before. Casually Mark asked if I wanted an adder "yeeees" I yelled in time to see him scoop up an adder (which I remember to be about a foot long) with an ice cream carton. We took it home and I kept it for two days in an upturned cupboard before my brother finally told my mum that it wasnt actually a grass snake!Alas but happily for the snake we took it back instantly to where it came from and I watched tearilly as it sped off into the meadow.I have enclosed a poloroid picture of the snake which none of my other friends believed to be a snake but just a fat worm. I would like to add that since that day in the following 33 years I have never attempted to catch another adder although I thoroughly enjoyed lying side by side with a few this fathers day.My kids have beaten me age wise .Evie was just 3 and Ein 5 when they saw their first adders  sorry cant upload image at the moment for some reason will try later.Dave Williams davewilliamsphotography.co.uk |
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ben rigsby Senior Member Joined: 27 Apr 2010 No. of posts: 337 View other posts by ben rigsby |
Posted: 23 Jun 2010 a thoroughly enjoyable account dave. 
ice cream cartons and adders? i never could have imagined it! ben Diversity. |
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Ginger! Member Joined: 01 Jun 2007 No. of posts: 6 View other posts by Ginger! |
Posted: 25 Jun 2010 When I was 10 years old I knew exactly where to find the Adders and could creep up on them any sunny day. I also knew precisely where to find Slow worms and lizards - guaranteed, every day. My first Grass snake was a tiddler at the foot of a tree, a total chance happening. However, my second wasn't until the age of about 16-17 when I saw what I can only describe as a whopper in Essex. I certainly wouldn't have picked it up! I've seen 3-4 since but nothing like this one. I went back to looking last year and plan to get out some more this year. I'm ragingly envious of some of the shots on here. Fantastic. |
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Robert V Senior Member Joined: 06 Aug 2004 No. of posts: 717 View other posts by Robert V |
Posted: 27 Jun 2010
Oh ok Ben, whatever you say!! When I was around twelve or thirteen, I went fishing with a pal to a river in essex. During what the americans call a comfort break, what we call having a piss in the bushes I looked down and saw a blue Adder sliding away into the undergrowth. For years i had been ribbed about it, colour blind they said, magic mushrooms they said. But then I join this site and guess what? Yeah, two pics of blue Adders are posted. If only I had my childhood again!!!! R RobV |
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Robert V Senior Member Joined: 06 Aug 2004 No. of posts: 717 View other posts by Robert V |
Posted: 27 Jun 2010 RobV |
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AGILIS Senior Member Joined: 27 Feb 2007 No. of posts: 694  View other posts by AGILIS |
Posted: 27 Jun 2010 great stuff Ben & Rob the blue adder mind blowing and Ben are you sure Minchinhampton aint out of the Midsomner murders  keithLOCAL ICYNICAL CELTIC ECO WARRIOR AND FAILED DRUID |
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ben rigsby Senior Member Joined: 27 Apr 2010 No. of posts: 337 View other posts by ben rigsby |
Posted: 30 Jun 2010 WOW! a BLUE adder!!!!! (pause to get breath back) never thought id see that! thanks robert. its eye looks clear so not about to slough. great that your childhood experience was vindicated by pix here at RAUK. sometimes in life we know what weve seen but have no "proof" when others doubt us. so to see the pix mustve been a real thrill. its a great ending to your story too. keith- i dont know about fiction but unfortunately many real life murders were committed very near me by a certain fred and rosemary west.   
cheers guys! ben Diversity. |
- First Tripera berus |