The heathlands are warmer than the surrounding habits ,and temperatures are regularly several degrees warmer than other places. The sun may feel warm, but on the ground it is much warmer. Reptiles spend the cooler hours basking in the open but in the case of the smooth snake(coronella austriaca),half hidden under the heather, they can be difficult to see. They are more easily fond under refugia. This splendid male has just shed his skin and thermoregulates under a piece of tin at dusk. Snakes are active now and come out of hibernation.Many will have started their courting rituals and moved away from the hibernaculum. Males of most species of snakes and lizards in temperate regions of the world emerge from their underground sites before the females to gain a head start on activating their reproductive systems and be ready for emerging females a week or two later.Smooth snakes mate in the autumn as well as the spring or early summer.Adders(vipera berus),only mate in early spring.
The slow worm(Anguis fragilis) is a legless lizard, not a snake, and is common; some people tend to think that they are smooth snakes because they have a smooth skin.The smooth snake is so names because it does not have scale keels like most other snake species and they feel silky to the touch.slow worms can live a long time ,one survived for 54 years in captivity.In the wild I am sure that they can live for twenty, and as they do, they become shorter as they loose their tails and they become thicker. The individual shown is an old female, she has a dorsal line, unlike mature males,and she has dark mottling towards the front. In mature males these marks are often light blue spots.
The common tiger beetle(cicindela campestris) are now active in sandy places; they are common on the heaths and are predatory on other small invertebrates.
A Puss moth has just hatched from my stashed cocoons.I reared several of them last summer, yet I had to cut their hard silken cocoons from off unsuitable surfaces.I then wrapped them in tissue paper to replicate the natural micro environment and hope that they emerged. It worked and here is a newly emerged adult on top one of the tissue cocoons with the exit hole visible.
Another moth that I found is Esperia sulphurella, a tiny micro moth;it must have emerged from some of the wood that I store for the fire or taxidermy mounts.Many species of micro moths feed in dead wood.
Moles are on the move. They often leave their cosy winter nests in search for greener pastures with more worms which are their staple diet.The males also need to look for females, and in doing so they often get killed on roads.This one was dead by Corfe castle.
I took its body as I often do with most road killed animals for taxidermy purposes.