I don't walk this half-mile section of track very often for the simple reason that I have never found much along it but today that changed. For a start....
....I found three small colonies of heath spotted orchids, but tucked so much into the undergrowth at the back of the verge that I decided to mark each of them with a small rock so I could find them again. As I did this....
....I came to this point where, fortunately before I stepped off the track, I spotted something lying in the grass - it's at bottom right in this picture.
It was an adder, probably about 2ft 6" long, bigger and rather darker in colour than the one we saw on our way to
Loch Lunndaidh back in early May - link
here. It lay absolutely still which was annoying as it was impossible to tell which end was the head and which the tail until, perhaps as it became used to my presence, it moved enough....
....for the head to be visible at the right-hand end. That the tail wasn't visible may have been because it remained down the hole where the snake had been sleeping. Certainly, the adder was almost comatose, not bothered that I moved around a fair bit in order, finally, to get....
....a picture of its head, its eyes watching me.
I love this sort of encounter, with something wild and dangerous, something which raises the pulse rate. I've been close to enough snakes to remain very wary of them but I also respect them. They're beautiful creatures, part of the wonderful natural world that we're doing our best to mess up.
No comments:
Post a Comment