SARG Reptile Survey Team Note - 17 September 2010
Just a month to go until the end of the survey season (around mid-October, depending on the weather). Some notable recent events:
Anne found and photographed a Smooth snake at **********. This is the first official record of Ca at ********** ******* ****. We've had anecdotal reports, and even a photograph, but the location of the sighting never tallied with the right sort of habitat. So we now have a formal record, as a new Surrey Ca site.
Henry had a staggering survey day at ******** on Thursday with 12 Smooth snake records on one visit...all with great ID photographs.
Mary found and photographed a basking ball of five juvenile Smooth snakes at Frensham, just a little way from a tin concealing an adult pair. But she will have checked about a thousand tins by the end of the season!!
We've set up three new sites in Sussex: *********, Iping and **********, two of which support Sand lizard populations (not Iping...yet).
The statistics so far this year speak for themselves:
| Tins_checked | Number_of_surveys | Sites_visited | Adder | Grass_snake | Smooth_snake | Slow_worm | Common_lizard | Sand_lizard | Total |
| 3939 | 205 | 39 | 172 | 110 | 149 | 399 | 367 | 84 | 1281 |
These figures are amazing! - again this year, SARG will have generated more records for ARC than the entire national NARRS programme.
The site managers are using the distribution data to inform their management plans, and we are using to data to inform re-introductions of Smooth snake and Sand lizard, and of course we have generated amazing statistics which will make future survey more effective.
Very many thanks for all the hours of survey that you have put in. My gob has never been so smacked!
We will be running habitat management days with ARC at most of the rare reptile sites, so if you fancy a little winter exercise, just check the SARG diary. The first event has already happened, and there will be a couple per month until March.
Cheers for now,
Steve
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