Adder, Mid Wales 17/07/2014.

[Ivan Lynas]

I stumbled across this female adder basking on an old tree stump whilst photographing black darters at Cors Caron yesterday. I was quite startled when I first saw her as I have never seen an adder in the wild before. I had previously read up that adders can be quite accomodating as long as you don't spook them or try to touch them in anyway. I therefore proceeded to get as close as I could to her and snapped her with my 100mm macro lense and then I left her in peace.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/100603024 ... 499736000/

[Paul King]

Absolutely fabulous Ivan, they are so good to see especially when they are so secretive.

We normally try and track rare birds such as Hen Harrier, Peregrine, Merlin, Goshawk and Short Eared Owls but we fancied a stronger challenge and decided to look for Adders instead about three years ago. We have improved our search technique to such a degree that we found at least SEVENTEEN adders on Sunday viewtopic.php?f=10&t=14265

We couldn't believe how lucky we were..... perseverance pays off no matter what you do

Grass Snakes and Otters may be the next targets in 2015

Meanwhile, I'm back to my normal pursuit and hopefully tracking down Iron Age, Romano-British and Medieval sites to survey

Paul

[Ivan Lynas]

Cheers Paul, My wife and I spent many years monitoring peregrines in North Lancashire, Yorkshire Dales and Mid Wales but nowadays I'm more than content crawling on all fours doing macro photography and the adder was a real bonus, cheers.