Serendipita

This afternoon our neighbour rang the doorbell and asked me to help him catch a snake in his garden. Yes, you read that right. He’d seen his cat outside of his window obviously prowling something and then taking a sudden leap because something lunged at him. He managed to put a bucket on top of the snake upside down and now wanted me to help to put it into an upright bucket with a lid. The snake was very aggressive and hissed like mad, but we managed to put it into the second bucket. Here it is:

It didn’t look like a native snake and googling for snake images didn’t help at all. We didn’t want to take it into the forest and release it in case it was non-native, but it was hard to identify. Finally I called a friend who teaches biology and knows a lot about snakes; he even keeps one as a pet. I showed him the photos I took, and he said it was a grass snake (called Ringelnatter in German). They usually have two distinctive yellow spots behind their head, which this snake was missing, but my expert explained that these spots faded with age.

Compare the head with this photo.

He said our specimen was an older one and quite a big one to boot. He recommended releasing it at the edge of the forst, preferably somewhere where it can catch some sun tomorrow. Of course we obliged. The snake pretended to be dead for a little bit, but quickly recovered and slid away into the darkness…

We had some visitors over the long weekend and visited the butterfly garden in Sayn and then went to see the birds of prey at Burg Maus yesterday.

Links are only available in German, sorry:

• Sayn, Garten der Schmetterlinge (kein Direktlink wegen Frames, sorry)
• Adler- und Falkenhof auf Burg Maus

André took some awesome photos, the best of which you can see on his Flickr page. Here’s a little preview:

I know, I’m a bit late, but at least here in Germany it’s still Easter. After having visitors for a couple of days before Easter, we spent yesterday and today quite unspectacularly. We went for long walks on both days, in spite of the almost constant snow showers we’ve had for days. I don’t have anything against snow per se, but would much prefer it during the winter, not a couple of days after the official beginning of spring and with temperatures above freezing so it melts almost as soon as it falls.

This is what the landscape looked like yesterday morning as we set out for our little hike: