# Gibraltar Trip 2022 - Herping the Rock



## Thrasops

I returned yesterday from this year's first trip home to Gibraltar. Before COVID struck I tended to visit a couple of times a year, usually Spring and September (for National Day) and had been missing the place (food and family as well as herps!).

May is my preferred month for herping there as it is the tail end of the breeding season so more herps are still active, but warm enough to go swimming and spend time on the beach too (which makes it more enticing for my wife).

So I decided to share some photos from the trip including the herps I found as well as some images of day to day life there. I will try to mix in amusing anecdotes and informative bits too; at some point or other I will make another thread as a more permanent article on the herpetology there and why it is important.


Another happy landing.










So at this point I should probably talk a bit about Gibraltar, where it is and why it is important from a Zoological/ Ecological perspective. Gibraltar is a British overseas independent territory on the southern tip of Iberia, bordering Spain and within view of Morocco.

'The Rock' itself is a limestone promontory (a point of high land jutting out to sea) with steep cliffs on the northern and eastern faces. It is largely limestone with alkaline soil, although it has large shale deposits as well. The highest point, O'Hara's Battery, is 426m above sea level.

The place itself is old, dating back to the Jurassic period around 200 million years ago. We know this due to the large fossil deposits there -sadly the fossils themselves are mainly distorted because of more recent tectonic activity due to plate movement around 5 million years ago that gave 'the Rock' its distinctive shape. I will talk about that in a later post as it is important.










This is a view from near my house there, near Varyl Begg estate. It shows the subtropical climate and unique vegetation well - lots of palms and African trees in the lower city; the Rock itself is largely covered with distinctively Mediterranean Bay, Carob and Olive trees that give it that invitingly luxurious dark green colour away from the white cliff faces.

Gibraltar is a small place, just under 3km long, 1.2km wide with an area of 6.8 km². It has 12km of coastline. Despite this miniscule size, it has no less than eight types of habitat listed under the EU Protected Habitats Directive that qualify as areas of special protection status.

Of course the first thing we do once off the plane once bags have been dropped home is visit the Square Cafe in Casemates square to reacquaint ourselves with proper food and drink:

Sangria










Ou favourite dish, gambas pil-pil (prawns in sizzling pepper and garlic sauce). This is served literally boiling and you dip good bread into the sauce before fighting over the last prawns. 




















A particular favourite of mine, filetes de ternera al pimiento (veal steak in pepper sauce).










Calamares (squid) of course.










Gallo (John Dory, a type of fish). Very very nice white meat that tastes almost like chicken, hence its name. Usually served in batter.










Once fed and watered I have a habit of rushing off to disappear in my favourite place in the world - 'the Jungle' - and nobody and nothing can stop me...


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## Thrasops

I have mentioned 'the Jungle' a lot in the past, both on previous trip reports on this forum and in various podcasts, videos and lectures I have appeared in.

Its formal name is 'the northern defences' but every young person on the Rock knows it as 'the Jungle' and it is host to all kinds of bizarre and mysterious legends; it is inhabited by Satanists; it is used by drug dealers for illicit deals; it is haunted by ghosts.

The place was been largely sealed off until 2017 and only locals living in the immediate area would know how to get in. Usually a couple of bars in the metal fence overlooking it would be broken or bent; however in the cases the government boarded these up or fixed them, particularly determined adventurers like myself could still climb down via grappling hook from the walls above - a drop of about thirty feet. There is also a cave that could be walked through that will take you into it - if the barred iron gate was open.



















What it actually is, is a pile of rubble and ruins with the occasional dog poop from the odd local that walks their dog there, and the occasional kid playing hooky from school.


These northern defences are a series of ancient gun and artillery emplacements, barracks, pill boxes and fortifications that have been abandoned to time and overgrown over the decades. A maze of steps and passageways cut into the Rock, of tangles of wild flowers, of piles of stones, of caves and tunnels and secret places. A place of mystery and adventure. Being surrounded by water on three sides, Gibraltar was viewed as basically one big fortress in olden days, and the fortress's major weakness was from the landward side - the north. And thus these artillery defences were constructed and hollowed out of the Rock itself, designed to withstand sieges for centuries.

240 years ago, a huge force of Spanish under Charles III and French under Louis XV laid siege to Gibraltar, expecting a quick and easy capture of the Rock and its garrison that would be a precursor to a joint Franco-Spanish invasion of Great Britain herself.

On the 13th September, the Franco-Spanish forces launched what would become known as 'the Grand Assault.' More men fought in this operation than had ever been active on the entire North American continent at any one time.
After one of the longest sieges in history, and the longest ever endured by British Armed Forces; blockaded from the outside world, malnourished, suffering from scurvy and subsisting on four ounces of rice a day; a British Gibraltarian force numbering just seven thousand men stood against the joint French and Spanish force of sixty five thousand and, outnumbered more than nine to one, won the day.

This is the legacy that steeps these ruins and it permeates these stones to this day, even now evidence of those feats of heroic resolve can be found if you know how to look. Shown are a cannonball and a musket shot.











It’s a place of screeching Peregrines, whining gulls, darting lizards and the occasional snake. It is the place I grew up that shaped me. Climbing. Jumping. Catching reptiles. Sitting on my stomach on a hot rock for hours watching lizards or jumping spiders or one of a thousand other curiosities. Getting dive bombed by gulls. Catching my first snake. Small wonder it is always the place I am most eager to visit.

Every year I make a bet as to which reptile I shall see first - a Moorish gecko, or a Wall lizard. This year, it was a gecko. One of the big, squat, warty Moorish geckos (_Tarentola mauritanica_) that are so common throughout Iberia. These are nocturnally active reptiles that forage at night on spiders, woodlice and moths - but they also are commonly seen basking in daylight and I shall talk more about this in a future post. For now, let me continue to set the scene so we can actually get to some snakes. I will come back to the geckos.




























Since 2015 the Gibraltar government has made a large scale effort to clean up 'the Jungle' - removing piles of rubble and rubbish and opening parts of it up to be more accessible to the public. I have mixed feelings about this; it seems less like 'my special place' with more people walking around, but at least the area is getting some recognition and they have not ruined it yet so it is still a great place to herp and find wildlife.










Here resideth my soul. 




























There will be more reptiles in the next post, promise!


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## Thrasops

Moorish geckos (T_arentola mauritanica_) are perhaps the most ubiquitous reptile in southern Iberia and are active at all hours. Although they forage nocturnally, like most geckos they spend plenty of time basking quietly in direct sunlight too.

The specimen below has a regrown tail.










In fact they change colour from beige or bone white to dark charcoal grey or black. Unlike many diurnal lizards, where rapid change to darker colours can be used for thermoregulation, it has been found that heat does not actually affect colour change in these geckos (Vroonen et al. 2012). 

In fact, the two factors that affect this change were found to be background colour (meaning they might be doing it as a form of camouflage) and illumination and UV reflectance (they reflect more UV in the darkness and absorb more in the light) meaning they are basking to access UV as well as warmth.










During that first two days, I measured UV Index on my Solarmeter 6.5 as almost 9 although ambient temperature was just 26c (surface temperatures are considerably higher). The geckos were basking in partial shade too, and overall spread of UV Index at basking spots was from less than 1.0 to around 8.0.










You will notice this species is quite social and often pair bonds, although it is possible to see much larger aggregations in close community too. This is a common observation not just in the wild but also in captivity, where many of my pairs have a habit of sitting close to one another with their faces close together, or resting alongside one another.

I digress, am just going through images in order, as I said above - we will come back to Moorish geckos in a later post.


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## Thrasops

Moorish geckos were the first lizards I saw this time, but of course it was not very long at all before I started seeing the OTHER most common reptile on Gibraltar, the Andalusian wall lizard (_Podarcis vaucheri_).










This is a quite small wall lizard, more flattened than other members of the genus that may be more familiar such as the Common wall lizard (_P. muralis_) and the Italian wall lizard (_P. siculus_). They also are easily the most agile and fastest member of the genus, as well as one of the most wary of people.

It was not too long ago where almost all of the wall lizard species of Iberia were massed under the name _Podarcis hispanica_ (Iberian wall lizard) but it had been a fairly open secret for some decades that this taxon included quite a number of geographically separated cryptic species. I myself performed my first scientific research projects on this species, under the tutelage of Dr John E. Fa, who had similar suspicions, and he taught me the finer points of scale measurements using fine grade callipers, recording data, how to perform multivariate analyses and all sorts of mathematical stuff in the hopes that we had another Gibraltar endemic species on our hands.

In 2011 a study determined - as we had deduced decades before - that '_Podarcis hispanica_' was in fact a series of different lizard lineages and cryptic species.












The species we have in Gibraltar being _P. vaucheri_, the Maghreb or Andalusian wall lizard, also found in Morocco and southern Spain.

Why do I bring this up? Because as I hope this and later posts will reveal, when you piece it all together, it helps show Gibraltar's importance in the local evolution. To explain this we will need to go back to the formation of Gibraltar, and those distorted fossils I mentioned in post 1.

So - I said Gibraltar was formed 200 million years ago in the Jurassic. But it gained its current shape much more recently, around 5 million years ago when the Eurasian and African plates collided and created the Gibraltar Arc - an orogenic belt stretching from the Rif in Morocco and encompassing the Baetic Cordillera in Spain, and joins the Mediterranean Alpine Belt that itself stretches up between France and Italy.










An orogenic belt is an area where two tectonic plates have collided and the resultant crumpling of the crusts creating mountains. This is why the Jurassic fossils in Gibraltar are distorted; Gibraltar itself is 'upside down' - the oldest strata are at the top, with the youngest strata underneath. This happened due to the way the plates collided and distorted during the formation of the Gibraltar Arc.

There is much more to the story though. When this happened, the land around Gibraltar rose above sea level, creating a huge inland sea called Lago Mare, the Mediterranean Lake.










The Strait of Gibraltar was landlocked, allowing the migration of all sorts of animals from Africa to Europe - including many of the reptile lineages we will be looking at such as the Andalusian wall lizards (Lacertidae), Montpellier snakes (Psammophiidae) and so on. In other words, it allowed the dispersal of life forms from one continent to another resulting in current biodiversity. This period was known as the Messinian - and it ended with the Messinian Salinity Crisis.

The landlocked Lago Mare began to desiccate over a period of thousands of years in the heat of the Mediterranean sun and the sea level lowered. Erosional processes during this time resulted in the deep canyons and trenches that define much of the Mediterranean Sea. This immense salt lake contained more than 1 million cubic kilometres of salt at concentrations of around 4×1018 kg - 50 times the salinity of the current sea. Obviously this hypersalinity could not sustain life, and the lowering of the sea level also created a heat sink effect where the dry desert basin began to prevent movement of terrestrial life that characterised the start of the era.

And then, the Messinian age ended, with an event imprinted upon proto-cultures across the globe. One that will be familiar to all of you... The great deluge; the Zanclean Flood.

The Straits of Gibraltar broke; water from the Atlantic seethed into the Mediterranean basin down a drop of more than 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) with a maximum discharge of about 100 million cubic metres per second (3.5 billion cubic feet per second), about 1000 times that of the present-day Amazon River. The largest waterfall in history. Sea level rose by ten metres a day. Mediterranean islands such as the Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia and the Greek islands became isolated. The global sea level rose by about ten metres due to displacement of water from the Lago Mare and salinity of the seas increased. The Lago Mare ceased to be a salt lake and became the Mediterranean Sea. This was the start of the Zanclean Age and the formation of the Mediterranean as we know it. 

Why bring up ancient floods and mountain chains in a post about herping Gibraltar? Well... it just so happens that being able to date these events is extremely important. We know roughly when they happened (5.33 million years ago). We have a concrete date for these events - and that helps us when it comes to studying evolution and speciation time frames.

The Baetic Cordillera (the series of mountains around South-East Spain of which Gibraltar is a part of) isolated different lineages of lizards. It resulted in speciation through that isolation. The same goes for all those unique endemic forms of life found on various Mediterranean islands - think about all the cool reptiles unique to islands like Ibiza, Milos, Crete, Corsica, Sardinia. We can date all that thanks to knowledge of these historical events and, with the advent of mtDNA data it helps us understand speciation and ultimately how evolution works.

Here are some more lizards. This little male Andalusian wall lizard (_Podarcis vaucheri_) cheekily stood his ground and allowed me to photograph him on my mobile (there's a trick to getting close to them - place the mobile so it hides your eyes. They allow you to approach much closer).










































I have spoken recently about thermal ecology. In a conversation with Rob Pilley many years ago he confided in me he had been unsuccessful getting this species to survive outdoors in the UK the way that other _Podarcis_ lizards do. I believe the reason for this is linked to my own research on their ecology; the UK is simply too cold for them.

You see... _Podarcis vaucheri_ has rather unique thermal ecological traits. When compared to other species of _Podarcis_, such as _P. liolepis_, their preferred body temperature (Tp) can be up to 4C higher in non-gravid animals (37C against 33C). That 4C body temperature is a LOT! Especially for such a small animal. It may also account for why this species seems so much faster and more alert than other _Podarcis_ - and why it is geographically restricted to Morocco, Gibraltar and southern Andalusia south of the Penibaetic system.

I promise there are snakes in the next post! Also, as should be obvious, there is going to be a lot more gecko and wall lizard spam coming up too.


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## Thrasops

The next day was my birthday, so of course I started it by going back up to 'the Jungle' again. It was not long before I was rewarded with the first snake of the trip - a rather pretty female Horseshoe whip snake (_Hemorrhois hippocrepis_). She was a bit scarred and seemed very empty, so probably had just laid eggs in one of the deeper recesses in the walls. Horseshoe whip snakes on Gibraltar are largely saxicolous and inhabit ruins, cliffs and even houses. A good way to find them is to shine a good torch directly into the holes, occasionally you will see one inside. I remember sharing some night vision images of one from Alameda Gardens on here a good few years ago.




































Horseshoe whip snakes are so named for the horseshoe shaped mark on the top of the head. They are by far the most common and easily encountered snakes on Gibraltar and do well there due to their remarkable adaptability - especially to human disturbance and anthropogenic change. They are known to often enter houses and easily traverse stone walls and ruins. Pictured is one that entered a house taken in 2015.










The reason for the species success is just plain old adaptability, they do not rely on any one source of food and indeed will take everything they can overpower, from amphibians, lizards, other snakes to rodents, birds and even bats. They are elegant, long and active foragers and expert climbers that can hunt prey inaccessible to other European Colubrids and regularly scale trees, sheer walls and overhangs in their search for prey and investigate every crevice, nook and cranny for geckos, wall lizards, bird nests (they will even climb up to nest raid wifts, swallows and martens from cliffs and the eaves of houses)... and bats.

In fact of all European snakes this is the one that most regularly practices chiropterophagy (bat eating). In 2009 one fell from the rafters of a building in Cáceres, Spain onto a researcher whilst in the process of eating an Isabelline Serotine bat (_Eptesicus isabellinus_); other bat species known to be predated by the snakes are Grey long-eared bat (_Plecotus austriacus_), Serotine (_Eptesius serotinus_), Common Pipistrelle (_Pipistrellus pipistrellus_), Kuhl's Pipistrelle (_Pipistellus kuhlii_), Lesser Mouse-Eared bat (_Myotis oxygnathus_) and the Maghreb Mouse-Eared bat (_M. punicus_). Crevice-dwelling bat species are far more likely to be taken than cavernicolous ones.

I take the time to specifically list all the different species of bat Horseshoe whip snakes have been documented to predate upon as chiropterophagy is actually rather rare among northern hemisphere snakes, and especially so among European ones. In fact only two other European species are documented taking bats to my knowledge - the Aesculapian snake (_Zamenis longissimus_) has been recorded doing so a couple of times. I was also sent a photo by Samara Hutting in 2018 of a young Montpellier snake (_Malpolon monspessulanus_) eating a bat, confirming that species will do so at least opportunistically if not regularly (as I am sure would be the case for some other European snakes when the opportunity presents itself). However it is only regularly recorded in the Horseshoe whip snake.

In fact this species is so adaptable that they are even known to occasionally enter the sea and may colonise new areas this way. I have now seen two Horseshoe whip snakes directly in the sea, and my cousin Peter Cosquieri found one in 2012 about 2km offshore whilst canoeing off Rosia (he took it on board and brought it to land).










Pictured are the more recent sightings, these from September 2020, off Catalan Bay:


















And this one from 2018 off Rosia:










So we see this species is amazingly adaptive - so much so that this is something of a problem on the Balearic Islands, particularly Ibiza where it was not present previously but has become invasive. it was assumed it was introduced there by the actions of man but I am sure could also have ended up there by sea. And it is currently a huge problem for the endemic wall lizards (_Podarcis pityuensis_) that fall prey to it easily and have evolved in an environment formerly devoid of snake predators.


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## Thrasops

Back to herping. On another, earlier birthday (2018) I happened to also be in 'the Jungle' but suffered a rather different experience related to horseshoe whip snakes. I have previously posted photos and videos on this very forum of this magnificent Horseshoe Whip Snake that I had been encountering for at least a decade in Gibraltar. It was easily distinguished by the scarring on its back and a blunt tail. I had been seeing it here every year since I was a young man and posted many photos of it before. Truly at this size (almost six feet) it could have been over twenty years old and was one of the largest of its kind I have ever encountered. Seeing it each year was like greeting an old friend.

That day in 2018 on a walk to its habitat I was dismayed to find it killed and strung up on a tree like a trophy. It's pretty obvious what happened. Some #@&+ing idiot (I will restrain my language) had a go at it with a stick, smashing its spine in several places and then, evidently feeling proud of what they have done, strung it up to show off their handiwork. They also broke the law and I reported this incident to GONHS who posted in the local paper about it making clear snakes are protected on Gibraltar.










My face says it all.










Very, very upsetting indeed. This is why education on snakes - particularly in Gibraltar where none poses any real threat to man and ALL would rather flee than attack - is so important.

As it happened, on THIS birthday I was overjoyed to find the adult female pictured in the previous post not 100 metres from where my old friend was killed, and better still seemingly having just laid so hopefully ensuring the next generation continue to slither and climb in the Jungle. 

I was also afforded the opportunity to help protect her future and that of her offspring by educating a few people that happened to be walking that path.










Children are in general innocent and curious and it is my strong belief _acquire _a fear of snakes; they are not born with it. Teach them young that snakes are not scary, they are not slimy, and basically are more scared of you than you are of them, and you hopefully drive out the acquired impulse to kill them with sticks.

Here I showed three young Gibraltarian boys (and their Dads) that snakes are cool and not to be feared - whilst also teaching them NEVER to touch or pick up a snake they cannot identify. They had never seen or touched a snake before. Look at the smiles on those faces!

This felt especially poignant on that day of all days. Hopefully I reduced the chances of that happening again!

*Snake*
_by D.H. Lawrence

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second-comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, if you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth ?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him ?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him ?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured ?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices :
If you were not afraid, you would kill him !

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act !
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate :
A pettiness._


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## Thrasops

It gets hard to progress in any kind of meaningful order if I go day by day in this account but I will do so as that is how my photos are arranged. So I will waffle on a bit more about 'the Jungle' before I proceed.

Those who have read my accounts before or heard me talk about this place may remember me mentioning how I caught my first snake. I suppose everybody has their own story about how they got 'bitten' by the snake bug. Here is mine, for those that bother to read my late night text diarrhoea.

My first encounter with a snake took place about thirty five years ago on a nice sunny day in 1987. Right here in fact:










Only I was much shorter and could barely peer over the wall.

My family were all out for a walk in 'the Jungle' and as usual I was way up front chasing lizards, turning over stones and keeping an eye out for any cool creepy crawlies. My Dad was out of sight behind me, festooned with his bird watching gear... camera, binoculars, telescope, bird book... (he was an ardent twitcher). My Mum and sister were even further behind, enjoying the walk and complaining about the sun like normal people.

At some point I found this stone staircase cut into the side of the cliff hat was so overgrown it might have been hidden there since the dawn of time... to my young imagination, anything could have been up those stairs. It felt no less adventurous than Sinbad on one of his mysterious voyages as I started up them, ducking under overhanging trees and sidestepping thorny plants growing out of the rock.

Here is a pic from this May.










And, of course, it wasn't long before I came upon that fateful first snake, stretched out on the wall to the side of the steps.

I stopped. Even when you are looking for snakes, there is always a moment of surprise and excitement when you actually come across one. It never goes away, no matter how many you have found. But, as so often happens, I came across this one when snakes were the farthest thing from my mind. I just had not expected to finally see one and my brain was not prepared to process the creature before me efficiently. If I had come across a dragon I would not be more surprised, and in fact that is exactly what this amazing creature before me represented at that moment. A dragon. A fantastic, bizarre and unknowable creature that was the culmination of nature's unknowable mystery.

"Dad..." I called down the stairs. "There's a snake...."

"Are you sure...?" I remember him calling back disbelievingly. He had good cause to be suspicious, at that age I was forever pranking people with plastic snakes or pretending bits of rope or twig were snakes. It was a routine my family was quite familiar with.

"YES!" I shouted back. As I did so the snake began to move, unhurriedly sliding along the wall and starting to crawl over towards the sea of undergrowth on the other side. If I did not do something, it would be lost. I made a decision. 

"I'm going to catch it!"

I think my Dad could hear something in my voice that told him this wasn't a prank. "Wait!" he called. "Do you know what it is?"

I didn't reply. I had no idea what kind of snake it was. I had already jumped onto the wall and grabbed the snake by the tail. 

Everything became chaos. The languid, unhurried creature became a vengeful storm. It thrashed wildly, twisting, hissing, lunging at me open mouthed. It was big. I had not realised how big. Standing on the wall and holding it up by the tail, the snake's head was below the level of my feet. And it was definitely winning. It was the best I could do to hold on and not get bitten, waving the thing away as it lunged at me.

At that point my Dad burst up the stairs through the vegetation, stopped short at the sight before him and said "Oh my god."

I directed him to grab the plastic sweet tub I always carried with me to put bugs or frogs or lizards in, which I had dropped as I climbed onto the wall to grab the serpent. He did so and the three of us - myself, my father and the snake, began a complicated dance as I kept it from biting either of us, my father tried to get its head into the ridiculously small tub and the snake attempted to wreak bloody wrath on us both for treating it so ignominiously.

Somehow, with great skill and dexterity, my father actually managed to direct the snake's head into the tub and for a couple of seconds it actually began to coil up inside. 

What happened next is somewhat confused. As he moved to put the lid on, trapping the head inside, it bit him. He always accused me of pulling the snake up in my excitement (which I didn't), but I think the snake had just realised it had nowhere to go and reacted to his hand going near.

Whatever happened, the snake bit my father on the fleshy part of his hand between his thumb and forefinger. He let out a very unnerving screech and, in what looked like horrifying slow motion from my perspective, the worst happened. He teetered for a moment on the edge of a step and then fell backwards down the stairs.

Here's a picture of the drop and my ever-patient wife. He rolled down those steps like Humpty-Dumpty.










I have no idea how he survived as he went rolling down, but what is more impressive is that he had the presence of mind to hold onto his telescope, camera and binoculars protectively, bunching his arms around them as he fell so miraculously none were damaged.

When I got to him he picked himself up, dusted himself off and asked in a panic-stricken voice "is it poisonous?" 

"No" I told him confidently. I was not confident.

"Are you sure you know what it is?"

"Yes. A Horseshoe Whip Snake." I had no idea what it was, I just knew Horseshoe whip snakes were not venomous and Montpellier snakes were and was hoping it was the former so I MIGHT be allowed to keep it.

At about that point my Mum and sister finally caught up with us after hearing all the shouting and commotion and the question of whether the snake was harmless was repeated. And, somewhat to my surprise, my Mother immediately was on my side and supported me keeping it (she used to catch creepy crawlies herself when she was kid, apparently).

Nonetheless, after examining the tiny pinpricks on his hand that leaked a drop or two of blood, my father evidently decided not to risk it and resorted to that oldest method of securing oneself against snake venom. He bit the wound and sucked out the poison.

And when I say "bit" I mean "BIT." He took a loud, audible chomp on the tiny pinpricks and started chewing agonisingly on his flesh and spitting out the gore every few seconds, until his hand was a bloody mess. It was actually pretty impressive what my father had unhesitatingly done to himself, even I had to admit that. Unscientific, sure, but certainly effective in terms of shock and awe. His face was white from the pain, his hand was now a mangled mess, he had certainly outdone the snake many times over in terms of damage done.

So we trooped back out of the Jungle, my father to get a bandage and an aspirin for his mangled hand, and me buzzing with excitement, and snakes twisting through my consciousness.

What a first encounter! How could I not be hooked? While I had always wanted to find a snake before that point, forever after the creatures would fill my imagination.

Apologies for another long ramble. It was nice to visit the place again last week and I was happy to get a photo there.

A few more images from that day of me monkeying around the old ruins.

Many years ago the roof of this little building was covered in pantiles and I witnessed two male Horseshoe whip snakes battling one another in their ritual dance. Now the pantiles are mostly gone but I always climb up and lift up the few that remain - now and then I even find a snake under one!










On the subject of male combat in whip snakes, last year I was sent these images by Brian Gomila, owner of Monkey Talk (a great guided tour of the local macaques) to identify and explain the snake behaviour this particular tour had witnessed. It was another example of male combat in Horseshoe whip snakes. Great images.










An image from the inside of one of the buildings in 'the Jungle' - it has been cleaned up quite a bit! It is really cool exploring the interiors of the buildings, although a good headlamp is required for many of them. There is a multitude of hidden caves there too. Sometimes you can find old curios dating back fifty years or more, like old 1950s coke bottles.










We climbed down from 'the Jungle' for lunch with my various Uncles and Aunts to celebrate my birthday. More gambas, enough said! 










I spent the rest of the day at Camp Bay snorkelling. It took some doing to actually fit into my old wetsuit. I guess maybe I ate one too many gambas...



















Gibraltar has some great snorkelling spots but the direction of the wind affects visibility and temperature of the water quite a lot, so knowing where to dive on any particular day relies on a knowledge of the wind and tide. One day you might experience super clear water, the next you might barely be able to see six feet. And if you visit the opposite side of the Rock, the experience will be completely different.

Camp Bay/ Rosia can generally be relied upon to be good in all weather though, although they can get quite choppy. That day was good conditions though and I had a pleasant dive.


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## Thrasops

We finished up by walking from Camp Bay to Europa Point, which is dominated by the lighthouse and a mosque gifted to Gibraltar by the King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in 1997 and was the tallest mosque in Europe (and one of the biggest in a non-Muslim country). It is situated next to a synagogue and a church - everybody gets along in Gibraltar. 










I have mixed feelings about visiting Europa Point these days. When I was younger, and up until about five years ago, there was a small little fort there and the surrounding area consisted of a lot of rough ground, grassy areas with mixed wild flowers that was great habitat for reptiles - including some unique Andalusian wall lizards that had a different behavioural profile to ones elsewhere on Gibraltar and often had blue spots. There were numbers of Large Psammodromus (_Psammodromus algirus_) and even Montpellier snakes there. I rummaged through my old photos and found these of the place:










And some of that lovely grassland that surrounded it:










Fast forward to present day, and the new football stadium and university have been built there, the fort is gone, the grassland is gone and the whole place was replaced with a carpark. This is what it looks like today:










I didn't even want to photo the rest of the place, it is just a big carpark and stadium now. At least much of the Europa Foreshore has been left intact, I will talk about that place another time as it was a little too late to go down there that evening.

Europa Point and Rosia great places to watch the sun sink behind the mountains near Algeciras, across the Bay of Gibraltar though. This was the view at 21:40. It is still a nice time to go swimming at this time.



















We were joined in our contemplation of the sunset by another Moorish Gecko.


















We rounded off my birthday by heading up to Commonwealth Pond to go frogging, will cover that in the next post.


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## Thrasops

We rounded off my birthday with a little nocturnal jaunt to Commonwealth Pond.

Another quick digression. Gibraltar has no natural bodies of fresh water. No ponds or lakes. Obviously this created quite a problem for the residents given fresh water is quite an important commodity. Formerly this issue was resolved by collecting rainwater on the eastern side with 10 acres of corrugated iron sheets. These were removed in 1991 after the advent of the more efficient desalination plants. Here is a photo of the Water Catchment from the 1960s.










I will come back to the eastern slopes of the Rock in a future post.

Nowadays, there are three main man-made ponds in Gibraltar that contain a host of introduced wildlife:

1. Alameda Botanical Gardens (public)










2. The Dell (private) lower area of Alameda Botanical gardens. Pictured on my wedding day where I was crazy enough to catch a turtle in my wedding tux.










3. Commonwealth Park (public)










Commonwealth Park pond being by far the largest and deepest of the three.

As they are man made, and as Gibraltar has no natural freshwater ecosystem, everything in these ponds is introduced and anywhere else would be a conservationist's nightmare as they are chock-full of highly invasive organisms. _Gambusia_ Mosquitofish rub shoulders with Spanish Dace, Koi and Jaguar cichlids; at least six species of turtle are to be found (Yellow Bellied Sliders, Red Eared sliders, Spanish Terrapins, Reeves' turtle, Map Turtle, Chinese terrapin). Perez's frogs and American red-clawed crayfish are all present in all three ponds. Finally, there are Viperine snakes occasionally found in the Alameda pond. All introduced).

And so, whenever I walk by in the evenings (it is amazing how often I walk by in the evenings!) I swing by and spend half an hour shining a torch into the pond to see what I can see, to the amusement of the local teenagers.










That day I was pleased to find some terrapins right by the edge.

_Mauremys reevesi_ (Reeve's Turtle)


























And _Mauremys leprosa_ (Spanish terrapin)










TBC


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## Thrasops

There were also numbers of calling Perez's frogs (_Pelophylax perezi_), possibly Iberia's most widespread and common frog. I got some cool videos on my phone of the animals inflating their cheek pouches and calling. Not sure how to share those here though.

This species is smaller than the Marsh frog (_P. ridibundus_) and Edible frog (_P. kl esculentus_) and very variable in colour. They certainly make quite a racket though.










































As mentioned above, the Commonwealth Pond is a trove of invasive species. I also found quite a few American crayfish.










(The best way to entice a crayfish out of its lair is to offer to shake hands with it. The crayfish is an honourable beast and will never fail to exchange polite greetings with you).


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## Thrasops

My wife treated me to a birthday meal at Gauchos, an Argentinian steak restaurant.

Sirloin










Chateaubriand










I don't generally have a sweet tooth but I admit to being swayed by Canadian Maple Syrup and walnut flavour ice cream. Had not tried it before, loved it.










And the night was finished off with a few Moorish geckos hunting nocturnally. Again, note the difference in coloration to the diurnally active animals.



































The following day we decided to visit Alameda and hop a cable car up the Rock.


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## Thrasops

The next day we started with some churro and papas for breakfast.











We hit Alameda Botanical Gardens around midday. This is the ideal time to start herping as the sun is just coming out there! You see, living on the slopes of a big Rock has an interesting effect on daylight. On the east side, the sun rises as normal but sets between 16.00 and 17.00 as it goes behind the top of the Rock. So you can be sunbathing or swimming at one of the eastern beaches like Catalan Bay or Sandy Bay in full daylight, and suddenly the light just goes.

Walk around the Rock though, and suddenly you are confronted by the full glare of daylight once again. On the western side, the sun sets between 21:00 and 22:00 and you can go swimming again until that time.

Conversely, on the west side (being blocked from the sunrise as it is by a great big lump of Jurassic limestone with some shale deposits) it remains dark until the sun rises high enough to crest the peak of the Rock of Gibraltar. Depending on where you are, this is between 11:00 and 12:00, although there are lots of shady areas well into the evening.

Living there and looking for reptiles, you become accustomed to the vagaries of light and shade as different parts of the place are illuminated at different times. Visit 'the Jungle' at midday and you get one set of areas cast in bright sunlight. Visit again at 16:00 or 19:00 and those areas might be in shadow again but new areas are lit. So it pays to visit a couple of times a day.

Alameda has a series of rock walls with lots of holes that are sometimes inhabited by Horseshoe whip snakes. That morning I did not find any however, although there were plenty of Moorish geckos and Andalusian wall lizards about.





































Notice all the red _Geckobia_ mites in between the fingers of this one.

In Europe, this genus is easily identified by the fact only the third and fourth digits on each foot have claws.










Podarcis vaucheri


















Finding no Horseshoe whip snakes, I turned my attention to the pond to see if I could spot one of the Viperine snakes. Sadly it had recently been cleaned out so no snakes were visible after the disturbance but some of the indomitable turtles approached to see if a free meal was forthcoming.


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## Thrasops

Across the road from Alameda gardens is the cable car station. This offers the most expensive but quickest way to get up the Rock. Usually I prefer to hike up myself, Jenny however is less amenable to this and in fairness when I hike, I go up at six in the morning... trying it after midday is far more of an exertion.

So, up the cable car we went with all the tourists.

The view at the top is great.










And we were greeted by the locals.

It's not your caca, it's _Macaca_ (_sylvanus_).










Lizards are abundant up the Rock in far greater numbers.



































Gibraltar’s upper rock area mostly consists of white limestone; it gets warm to the touch but far less so than other rock types I’ve measured (which I guess you’d expect from a more reflective surface).


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## Thrasops

We also got glimpses of Gibraltar's third most common reptile the Large psammodromus or Algerian sand racer (_Psammodromus algirus_).


















This is a shy Lacertid lizard larger than a wall lizard and far less easy to get close to than the wall lizards and geckos. The fact they tend to skulk around dense vegetation means that usually all you see of them is a brief flash of their orange rear quarters whilst they noisily crash off into the undergrowth.

Here are some better photos of the species I have managed to take on previous trips.












































Large Psammodromus are among my favourite lizards. They are incredibly fast and quite hard to catch. Here is a baby. They can make little metallic squeaks when you pick them up.


















They are extremely common in the southern two thirds of Iberia but because of their shyness and unwillingness to let humans approach they can be hard to see.


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## Thrasops

More lizards and geckos from the Rock.



























And, at Princess Caroline's Battery, I caught the second snake of the trip. Another beautiful Horseshoe whip snake. Younger animals with a lot of definition in the pattern like this are gorgeous. As they get older, the pattern can become busier and less distinct.

The blotches on snakes can look similar across the world, and this is because they all serve a pretty cool function known as flicker fusion. As the snake moves, the blotches merge together and it makes it harder to see the snake well as it moves, especially through vegetation. The length and speed the snake species moves determines how many blotches they will have to optimise this effect. But this is why colour and pattern among so many snakes can seem so similar even on completely different continents.


































After a quick drink of water the snake was released where it was found.


















And a Southern Smooth snake (_Coronella girondica_) I found in the same place in 2020 that I don't think I ever shared.


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## Jibbajabba

Nice pictures .. I used to live in Gibraltar so I know it well - never been herping though


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## Swindinian

That was fascinating 😃👏👏👏


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## Thrasops

Jibbajabba said:


> Nice pictures .. I used to live in Gibraltar so I know it well - never been herping though


Thanks! Whereabouts did you live? It has changed an awful lot in the last few years, sadly not for the better in some cases (east side is a mess, loads of new high rise buildings have obscured the sea view in the city). Herping there is quite labour intensive aside from the common lizards there, going in Spain I can find more snakes in a day than I usually find in a fortnight on Gibaltar. But that makes snake sightings there all the more special.



Swindinian said:


> That was fascinating 😃👏👏👏


Thanks! Plenty more to come.


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## Thrasops

On the 18th May we went for a walk on the Europa Foreshore. This area is especially interesting as it is home to a great number of endemic plants found nowhere else in Europe such as _Iberis gibraltarica_, the Gibraltar candytuft (the pink flowers seen in the below pictures). It is also home to a lot of north African plants and plants also found on the Canary islands such as the _Malcolmietalia _grassland and patches of _Euphorbia _scrub.

This is one of my favourite areas as it is one of the least disturbed parts of Gibraltar left and some of the rarer reptiles can potentially be seen there. The only snake seen that day was a small Montpellier snake (_Malpolon monspessulanus_) which sadly eluded me.











As usual there are great numbers of _Podarcis vaucheri_ which inhabit the cliffs and rock outcrops, sometimes right above the sea water itself.


















































Here are photos of a small Montpellier snake I caught a few years ago. This is my favourite species of snake, not only because the fact it is rear fanged venomous gave catching them a slight air of zest and adventure when I was a kid, but also because they are behaviourally one of the most interesting species of snake known with social behaviours more akin to what you would expect to find in a bird rather than a snake (pair bonding, male presenting prey to female, mutual defence behaviours, territoriality, press ganging defeated rivals into helping defend that terrtory etc) and the Psammophiine 'rubbing' behaviours.


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## Thrasops

Some more images of the Europa Foreshore. One of Gibraltar's best kept secrets. What is interesting about the eastern side and part of the foreshore is that the sand and substrate there dates back millions of years and the habitat itself is a holdback from the Mediterranean Desert that occurred just prior to the Zanclean Flood, during the Messinian Salinity Crisis I outlined in a previous coast. At this time much of the Mediterranean desert was desertified but now the only European desert that remains is in Spain, the Tabernas Desert in Almeria, and surrounding areas (where many oif the Italian directed 'Spaghetti Westerns' were shot!).

Now all that remains of the once great deserts that existed to the east of Gibraltar is the sand that can still be found on the Eastern slopes, and some of the unique flora found here.



































A view of Europa Point from the crest of Europa foreshore. As close to Morocco as you can get without actually being there. You can see the Levanter cloud forming in this pic. I took a video of it too but unsure how to share videos to this forum from my phone.


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## Thrasops

A couple of shots of an adult Spanish terrapin (_Mauremys leprosa_) from Commonwealth Pond. This species gets its less than flattering binomial from the fact that it can ihabit foetid and truly dirty bodies of water that undergo eutrophication and sometimes its shell gathers all kinds of algae, giving it a leprous look. In fact these guys are so tough and survivable they can keep going in places that even the ubiquitous American sliders cannot - not often a native turtle species can outcompete the invasive sliders but these can.

They are also surprisingly predatory and will not just take frogs and fish but will chase crabs and small birds and even take a bite out of a water snake if they have the chance.


























Coexisting with this species in the Commonwealth Pond are several species of other terrapin including Sliders, shown here with another invasive - the lowly Mosquitofish (_Gambusia spp_), which have been introduced to every standing body of water including cisterns to eradicate mosquito larvae.


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## Thrasops

A slight digression from herping but one I am sure some will find interesting nonetheless. We went night fishing for conger and eagle rays under the tutelage of my Uncle Mario Ramos, President of the GFSA (Gibraltar Federation of Sea Anglers), its longest serving member and probably the most highly regarded and respected fishermen on the Rock -and close family friend Charlie Carrera, of equal skill and reputation (he once jumped into freezing water in Iceland to grab a prize-winning cod he had reeled in, ensuring victory in that competition). Between them these two men had held rod and line records at one time or other for pretty much everything that swims though the strait. A year ago in August 2021 my Uncle even reeled in an 80kg Bluntnose Six-Gilled shark (_Hexanchus griseus)_ from this very spot - the only one ever caught in the 111 year history of the GFSA. (It was released alive).










We dropped lines at exactly 21.00. Conditions were slightly windy but calm.










We were using whole mackerel caught that morning by my Uncle as bait.


















The legend himself.










First catch of the night was Charlie's, a small 30" Conger (_Conger conger_, easiest binomial ever).










Followed by a slightly larger 48" specimen I brought up.










And then I reeled in a Mediterranean moray (Muraena helena) one of my favourite fish - but one whose business end is best avoided!


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## Thrasops

It was otherwise a fairly uneventful night and around 01:00 we we all set to pack up when something took the bait on one of the lines and ran with it. Definitely not an eel!










Taking the line I began reeling in, to my consternation whatever it was was taking out more line than I was reeling in. It took ten minutes to bring the sea monster in although it felt like an hour. It turned out to be a species I have never seen before - a 13.5kg Eagle ray (_Myliobatus aquila_), known locally as _chucho_. The first recorded this year from Gibraltar (although they are common in summer).


































All fish were released, although my Uncle caught some Bluemouth that we took home to eat and were delicious.
All in all a very cool night.


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## karlh

Brilliant thread I spent a lot of time in Gib including a 6 month draft of often find various geckos morrish and a few other I couldn't I.D. 

Gibraltar Squadron we'd often find ' green ' lizards ? 

I heard there's a species of asp that lives on the south face of the rock? I was never lucky enough to find any snakes


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## Thrasops

karlh said:


> Brilliant thread I spent a lot of time in Gib including a 6 month draft of often find various geckos morrish and a few other I couldn't I.D.
> 
> Gibraltar Squadron we'd often find ' green ' lizards ?
> 
> I heard there's a species of asp that lives on the south face of the rock? I was never lucky enough to find any snakes


Thanks!

The two gecko species on the Rock are Moorish and Turkish, could be the other ones you mentioned were the latter?

There used to be Ocellated lizards (_Timon lepidus_) on Gibraltar and their last stronghold was Windmill Hill, sadly they are now locally extirpated from the Rock; the last I am aware ever being found there was in 2003. But if it was large green lizards you saw prior to that time it may have been those.

There are no vipers on the Rock although the 'official' GONHS list of reptiles and amphibians of Gibraltar still lists _Vipera latastei _(Lataste's viper) as being present for some reason; they used to be found on the neutral ground/ no man's land between Gibraltar and Spain and there is a baby specimen preserved in the GONHs HQ at Jew's Gate from that period; as with several other species on the list they sadly disappeared when no man's land was urbanised. Although locals can be fast and loose with the names they give snakes so 'Asp' is still used sometimes for random harmless species. 'Grass snake' is another name also given for things like Horseshoe whip snakes.


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## Jibbajabba

Thrasops said:


> Thanks! Whereabouts did you live? It has changed an awful lot in the last few years, sadly not for the better in some cases (east side is a mess, loads of new high rise buildings have obscured the sea view in the city). Herping there is quite labour intensive aside from the common lizards there, going in Spain I can find more snakes in a day than I usually find in a fortnight on Gibaltar. But that makes snake sightings there all the more special.
> Thanks! Plenty more to come.


In La Linea for a while but eventually had enough and moved to Harbour Views (36.144804637820734, -5.361297083642819). At a time where the casino wasn't refurbished yet (they just about announced it when I left) and Morrisons was still called Safeways. I used to work in 888.com at Europort (opposite Lek Bangkok and OMG they still exist but I still remember a pizza takeaway being in there). Fun times ...


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## Thrasops

Back to snakes. Alameda Gardens is, as far as I know, the only place on Gibraltar where one can see Viperine snakes (_Natrix maura_). Although this semi-aquatic species may have existed in the salt marshes of No Man's Land between Gibraltar and La Linea up until that area was urbanised in the sixties, the lack of freshwater habitat meant it was extirpated from the Rock once No Man's Land was turned into the airport and frontier. That is, until the Alameda Gardens ponds were built and around 1995 I came across a specimen in there which I took to Dr John Cortes, the local Minister for the Environment.

Since then more specimens have been found in the gardens although it is unknown if they made their way there naturally or, more likely, were released there by people. They only occur in the one pond and surrounding area and on a quiet weekday if people are not walking around to disturb them, you can watch them fishing in the shallows for Mosquitofish (_Gambusia_).



















































A specimen found basking on the wall beside the pond (being restrained in this pic). In the hottest part of the summer this species becomes almost totally aquatic and will even hide in crevices beneath rocks in the water. The rest of the year they will of course come out of water and bask or move around on land. Sometimes they can even be seen on trees overhanging the water.










I am sure local kids take specimens to keep now and then, some years you do not see any, some years you find loads. This year was a good year despite the pond being cleaned up.


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## Thrasops

Being such a small place surrounded by water on three sides as it is, life in Gibraltar is very much dominated by the sea. Everything from food (almejas/ small clams in white wine sauce):










To pastimes. Snorkelling being one of my favourites.










One of my favourite creatures is the humble octopus. You get several species around Gibraltar but the most common is this one, _Octopus vulgaris_ or the Common octopus. Since I was a kid I have been utterly unable to leave them alone, whether that be feeding them limpets and small crabs underwater or picking them up to play with. If you are gentle with them and prevent them from jetting off (by putting your hand in front of their mantle) eventually they get bored of trying to escape and resigned to figuring you out instead. You can sometimes have very intimate little encounters as they examine you - their tentacles touching your skin, mask, wetsuit, snorkel, testing each material and then sitting still and watching you with eyes that carry more intelligence than people might believe.










Aside from the sea, the other natural force that heavily influences life there is the wind.

Gibraltar has two main winds - _Levanter _(east wind) and _Poniente _(west wind).

When the east wind blows (or occasionally due to differences in barometric pressure across the straits of Gibraltar) it is forced up the steep eastern face of the promontory and condenses into a banner cloud as it comes over the top of the Rock. This forms what is known as a banner or pennant cloud, which can be seen well in this video.






Here are some photos I have taken myself of the effect showing just how much it can effect local weather.

Photo from La Línea de la Concepción, Spain:










Photo from Gibraltar Airport:










Photo from Alcaidesa, Spain:










It is worth noting that although it is cloudy it is still warm and often uncomfortably humid. When Levanter hangs over the Rock all you can really do is go to the beach on the East side, where water will invariably be lovely and warm... or you can go herping. See, this rain shadow effect is actually a blessing in disguise as it results in a much more humid microclimate compared to the surrounding region of Spain, hence why there are so many endemic species of plant on the Rock, such as _Silene tomentosa_, _Cerastium gibraltaricum_ and _Saxifraga globulifera_ var._ gibraltarica. _This of course also translates to the number of animal species being so high.


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## Thrasops

Nothing like a spot of random gecko bothering in The Jungle.


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## Thrasops

Speaking of geckos, here is Gibraltar’s second, rarer gecko species:_ Hemidactylus turcicus_, the Turkish gecko. Known in Spanish as Salamanquesa rosada (pink gecko). This one was taken near Alameda Gardens and Sandpit tennis Court where the population originated.










They are very common elsewhere in the Mediterranean but on Gibraltar are very localised and much harder to see than the much more aggressive and larger Moorish gecko.

In fact when I was a boy it was not known this species was even present on the peninsula - they are not mentioned in the natural history books of the time. I first became aware of a colony at Sandpits tennis court around the late 1990s (a couple of hundred metres from where I took this pic).

In the decades between then and now I’ve found individuals up the Rock and in “the Jungle” so they definitely have spread (or perhaps small isolated colonies were always there but unnoticed) but they are certainly still quite hard to see here.

They are ubiquitous around the coasts of Spain, Greece and North Africa though.

There is a slight niche partition between Moorish and Turkish too, with Turkish actually less likely to colonise human houses here and preferring old stone walls with lots of crevices, or trunks of palm trees. Moorish seem to better colonise inhabited dwellings with lights and the flatter white washed walls. Where Moorish are not present, oddly Turkish become more adventurous so I wonder if there’s an element of competition going on.

Here are other individuals I have photographed basking out in the sun.



































They really are rather beautiful lizards.


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## Thrasops

Nothing else snake-related here but thought I would finish off this thread for the sake of completeness with a few other wildlife photos from the trip.

Playing peek-a-boo with one of my friends, a Moorish gecko (_Tarentola mauritanica_).


























More images of me messing around on the ruins. Gives an idea on the terrain and habitat.


























Barbary partridge (_Alectoris barbara_), Gibraltar’s national bird. Not a common sight these days, especially not this close! I saw the pair skulking about on top of one of the stone walls in The Jungle, and it took quite a bit of sneaking beneath the walls to get this close (I crept at the bottom of the wall with Jenny giving me directions and using my phone camera as a 'periscope' to see them, they are looking at my phone as I raised it above the top of the wall to snap the pics). 




















With a bit of sneaking I was able to get the following shot, which I was very happy with. Not bad for a mobile phone pic!










Of course there is more to holidays than getting hot and dusty climbing around ruins and chasing lizards. 

This, my friend, is a Johnny Special.
Two flavours of granizada (slush puppy). Ice cream. Syrup. Sprinkles. And a flake. All in one cup.
The decadence.
Francis digs the Johnny Special.
Also cold ice cream on hot waffles is nice.


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## Thrasops

A couple more _Podarcis vaucheri _from the Europa Foreshore.


























After seeing the pair of partridges in 'the Jungle' a few days before, I was overjoyed when, on our last evening in Gib, I saw this female leading nine tiny chicks along the beach at Camp Bay. I was able to get quite a lot of phone video from a respectful distance but no idea how to share it on here, but here are a couple of snaps. Very cute.




































And I think that was about everything for this trip!

List of herps seen:

_Podarcis vaucheri_ (Andalusian wall lizard)
_Tarentola mauritanica_ (Moorish gecko)
_Hemidactylus turcicus _(Turkish gecko)
_Psammodromus algirus_ (Large Psammodromus)
_Hemorrhois hippocrepis _(Horseshoe whip snake)
_Malpolon monspessulanus_ (Montpellier snake)
_Natrix maura_ (Viperine snake) - introduced
_Mauremys leprosa_ (Spanish terrapin) - introduced
_Mauremys reevesi_ (Reeve's turtle) - introduced
_Mauremys sinensis_ (Chinese terrapin) - introduced
_Trachemys scripta elegans_ (Red Eared slider) - introduced
_Trachemys scripta scripta_ (Yellow Bellied slider) - introduced
_Graptemys geographica_ (Map turtle) - introduced
_Pelophylax perezi_ (Perez's frog) - introduced


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