After Practice in Haidary - Photos of Various Amphibians and Reptiles

During practice I had to photograph both amphibians and reptiles. A number of photographs accumulated, and I tried to collect them on this page. Fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina). We found a spot where there were at least five toads per 10 meters of bank along the Siverskyi Donets inlet!

Sharp-snouted frog (Rana arvalis).

Green frogs (Pelophylax sp.).

It is clear who is in charge here.

A few more beautiful photographs of green frogs. This is a hybrid, the edible frog (Pelophylax esculentus). And this is a representative of the parental species, the marsh frog (Pelophylax ridibundus).

You can see that this male has cleared himself a small open space - a singing post.

And this P. esculentus pushed the mud aside.

What a matching tone!

Also P. esculentus.

A half-submerged position. In this and the next photograph - P. ridibundus. In a typical habitat, on a little island of filamentous algae (if I understand correctly how "scum" should be called). A tadpole of Pelophylax sp. For the previous four years we had caught tadpoles on the opposite, left bank of the Donets opposite Zmiiv. On our bank their numbers were low everywhere.

But this year we were lucky: we found a little bay on our bank (by the way, the same one where there were many fire-bellied toads) with an abundance of tadpoles. And the reason for this richness seems simple. These too are part of the fauna - cows, that is, domestic bulls (Bos taurus taurus): the domesticated subspecies of the wild bull. Of course, they do not belong to the herpetofauna. They are placed here because they fertilize the water quite heavily in the places where they are brought to drink.

Those are the very places where the best conditions arise for the development of green frog tadpoles. During practice we caught several females of the European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis) climbing onto the biological station grounds to lay eggs. We moved them to more suitable places.

Do you see the turtle?

Here it is!

This photograph was taken on an excursion on the banks of the Orel River.

A turtle clutch dug up by a fox (Vulpes vulpes).

Eggshells are scattered about. Foxes search turtle nests very thoroughly: look how much digging there is.

They started digging and gave up when they did not find the clutch... And three more photographs from the banks of the Orel.

Do you see the multicolored racerunner (Eremias arguta) in the grass?

Here it is already caught, in the hand. Multicolored racerunners also occur around Haidary, but on the other bank of the Siverskyi Donets (in the pine forest near Zadonetske).

This species occurs both here and in the clay deserts of Kazakhstan!

And this is the most common lizard here, the sand lizard (Lacerta agilis). A large male that lives right on the territory of the biological station.

In the ear, on the eardrum - a blood-fed tick (Ixodes sp.). That is where the skin is thinnest. This photograph was taken on an excursion; in trying to catch the sand lizard, its tail was accidentally torn off. Grass snake (Natrix natrix).

Lately I have become a little hostile toward them: there are very many of them in those ponds where, from our point of view, the most interesting population systems of green frogs live.

How many unique hybrid individuals they eat!

You can see the swimming grass snake pushing off from the water.

Well, this is the smooth snake (Coronella austriaca). When I caught it, I was surprised that it did not even try to hide. After a thorough photo session we released it exactly where we caught it. It lives near the place where the very green male sand lizard shown a little earlier was caught and released.

There is a good chance that sooner or later they will meet (the smooth snake is saurophagous!).

Joint photographs of the smooth snake with females of the only species of primate found near the biological station (Homo sapiens).

Very graceful creatures, aren't they?

And finally, the Nikolsky's viper (Vipera nikolskii or Vipera berus nikolskii, if it is treated as a subspecies of the common adder).

Also from the biological station grounds.

I caught it right under dormitory #13 and released it in the floodplain farther away from people.

It is so black that it is hard to make out the details of its appearance in the photographs.