Grass Snake

Description:

Slim water snake, probably a youngster, about 40 cm in length; grey-brown in colour with darker vertical stripes along the body, and a characteristic whitish-yellow collar behind the head. An excellent swimmer, and I probably interrupted it hunting - I saw it closing on large group of tadpoles

Habitat:

Seen in a pond in, until recently, protected wetland at the feet of Jura mountain range.

Notes:

I was saying that I saw this small snake in a "until recently protected wetland"... Here, I'm talking of marshes of Prodon, consisting of a small pond in a slightly larger wetland area, the protection aiming to preserve the Yellow-bellied toad (Bombina variegata) and its habitat at the feet of Jura. It was a lovely place, albeit dirty and quite polluted as people were throwing all kind of s..t in the pool and around it. Yesterday, I went for a brief visit to this pond, after a few months of not having a chance; and had my heart broken - some sort of construction or development is going on; plenty of trees were cut on shores, and shores elevated; a large road in woods was also cut; a previous dirt-walking path was covered by rubble - and a large irregularities on this road and around it were filled... The problem is that these holes, when filled with water, were used by toads to lay their eggs; last year I saw toads in them... I'm still trying to find out what happened there.