good exhibition today!!!

[Stefan-A]

Luckily, you can still see them in their natural habitat.

[Thamnophis]

Luckily, you can still see them in their natural habitat.

That's true. Strangely I don't look at Natrix natrix as a terrarium-animal.

Meeting them in the wild is always fantastic!

[Stefan-A]

Indeed, but I'm warming up to the idea of people keeping them. They don't seem very difficult as captive bred.

I don't know how much the people here know about Finnish society, but almost every Finnish family has a small summer cottage in the countryside, usually by a lake or the sea. Ours happens to be in on an island in the Gulf of Finland (60.12.54 N, 25.57.59 E according to Google Earth). There hasn't been more than one or two snakes on that island since my grandparents first started building there some 30 or 40 years ago, but last summer I found 5 Vipera berus and one huge Natrix natrix within 10 meters of the house. Got a few pictures of the Viperas, but not of the Natrix. Anyway, the area is crawling with voles and frogs, so it's really no wonder that both species thrive. We saw that grass snake a couple of times, it was well over a meter long (N. n. natrix doesn't normally get nearly as big as helvetica iirc), really beautiful grey with small black markings along the body.

As a sidenote, I found a dead vole maybe 2 meters from where I found one Vipera berus and of course the snake became the main suspect. Personally, I feel very lucky to be able to see these snakes in the wild.

I have no idea why I decided to tell this little anecdote. Maybe because it's around 3:30 AM and there was a bit of partying going on earlier in the evening.

ps. pictures of one Vipera berus and a nearby Rana temporaria in the gallery.

[Thamnophis]

Great to hear that it goes well with snakes in your part of Finland.

And that is a very beautiful Vipera berus that you photographed.

Hope to find some in the Czech Republic this year.