# Herping in Spain (Many Photos)



## JaySteel (Jan 28, 2010)

Having just got back from family holiday in Torremolinos Spain, I thought I'd share some of my wildlife photos with you all. There's only so much time I can spend laying by the swimming pool so whilst my family spent much of the day time swimming and tanning themselves I took the opportunity to go off herping with my camera.
I had hoped to find some of Spain's snakes to photograph but this proved far more difficult than expected unfortunately.

Most mornings were very hot right from the early hours with the large thermometers on the street showing around 28 degrees. The daytime temperatures reached 35-40 degrees with clear or hazy sunshine every day.






















Right from the first day I found it fairly easy to spot some lizards basking on rocks all through the day. They were similar in appearance to our Common Lizards here in the UK but with longer more pointed heads and far longer tails. Some of these lizards had bright green tails and others had bright orange tails. I don't know if these different types of lizards or not. They were very active and very fast making it very difficult to get a good shot of them. I failed to get any shots of the orange-tailed variety.






















It took me until the third evening before I finally managed to spot my first Moorish Gecko at about 11:30pm. It was on the wall of a restaurant and it was surprisingly well camouflaged against the painted brickwork. The next one I saw was walking along the underside of a high branch of a tree and if it hadn't been moving I would never have seen it. Again its markings and colouration gave it great camouflage. Once my family were tucked up in bed I went back out to find one to photograph. I was able to find and catch a fairly large and beautiful example sitting on the side of a building under the dim glow of a nearby street light. I was able to handle this gecko without any trouble and it was remarkably calm and co-operative for my photos. I kept it's time in captivity limited to about 20 minutes and then placed it back in exactly the same spot on the wall where it was originally found. Even then it didn't run off. It just sat there and turned its head to watch me walk away.
































My wife had agreed to me having one full day to go off in search of snakes so I headed of early one morning away from the town and out in the direction of the surrounding mountains. The habitat was dry and sandy soil with loads of rocks and dumped rubbish and debris to turn over. The sound of crickets chirping away was loud and constant and I saw dozens of different types of both crickets and grasshoppers with some striking patterns and colouration (none of which I took the time to photograph unfortunately). There were also some insects that resembled stick insects but I think that these too may have been a species of cricket.



































Whilst turning every possible rock, log, or other piece of possible refugia that could possibly hide a snake I came across a few small geckos. I don't know if these were the same variety as the larger geckos that I previously spotted or not. Some were as small as 30mm long. 






















Unfortunately I found no snakes again throughout the whole day. I did see several different types of dragonfly.






















By the end of the week I had discovered a couple of shallow streams that were full of frogs in various life stages. Again I'm not sure if all the frogs were of the same variety or not. There were some very large tadpoles that were about the length of one of my fingers. There were many very small gold coloured frogs. There were also many medium sized adult frogs which were a very pretty green colour. I identified them as Edible Frogs but upon return I now think they were more likely to be Perez's Frogs which are very similar in appearance. There were also some very large frogs that appeared almost black in appearance. These were very shy and disappeared as soon as I got within about 10 metres away so I didn't manage any photographs. Despite a few visits to these areas at different times of the day I was again unable to find any snakes to photograph.




















































Thanks for looking. This thread is continued in part 2 . . . .






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## MP reptiles (Dec 30, 2010)

Brilliant Pics!


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## hogboy (Aug 22, 2006)

Fantastic pics :2thumb:
What camera are you using ?


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## HABU (Mar 21, 2007)

very cool!!:2thumb::no1:


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## JaySteel (Jan 28, 2010)

Thanks everyone. I use my old trusty Canon 40D. The two lenses I took with me were the standard 17-85mm IS, and my favourite Canon 100mm Macro 2.8L IS.
I'll be putting these shots on my website once I've got a positive ID for every thing.

Jason


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