Crawling King Snake - The Doors

 With the forecast showning overnight temperatures as kissing 'zero' once again we decided to ignor the advice and flashed up the Moth Traps at about 21:00 as has become usual. Early morning and there was something of an avian Eurovision Song Contest between a subdued

GUINEAFOWL

representing the foreiners and

DUNNOCK

fairly quiet as well

representing

the resident community.
 Unsurprisingly, we were blessed with no more than our second of the year

DARK SWORD-GRASS
encouraging an early decission not to flash the traps up on the night! 

A grey, grey morning followed with nothing new to report but by noon and after the sarnie and coffee it looked every bit as if Spring had Spring. If nothing else and a warm feel to the afternoon it was going to at least worth another try for daytime flying Moths, particularly Common Heath and the overlooked ritual of turning the Sunday

Reptile (Herps) Covers.
Under the very first tin a

SLOW WORM

as if to order

slithered into full view before returning from whence it came.
A keen eye, or as keen as it gets,

was kept on the purposefully laid

SAND / GRAVEL TRAPS
which give Sand Lizard's a perfect sunbathing spot we will be on alert.
The second cover also produced and this time an already surfaced

and likely sleeping

SMOOTH SNAKE

before being coaxed into action

and just about showing the distinguishing black 'heart-like' mark on the head.

It also quickly went to ground but 2 little gems which are always great to see as 'Firsts for the Year!
Still determined to find our 'flying prize' as the scene got progresively darker, we were expecting rain but not this lot

A light sprinkling of Snow at first

quickly turned to

a combination of Snow and Hail

which we call

'SNAIL'

and seemingly not at all to the liking of the maybe recently arrived

STONECHATs
It disappeared as quickly as it had arrived but nevertheless we still could not resist flashing up all Moth Traps
overnight!