The wintering period of the vipers has ended. Similarly to previous years, we regularly checked the wintering burrows in the Hungarian Meadow Viper Conservation Centre, and the release site.
In the beginning of December – in unusually mild weather – we checked ten artificial burrows on the release site, by using a pipe camera. We found three vipers in two burrows, but one of them was flooded due to high level of ground water-table, so we decided to move two snakes from that burrow to a safer wintering place. Our wintering burrows attracted other species too. Beside the vipers, we found a young Smooth snake, and some Danube crested newts. Two other burrows were used by rodents, as they built nests in those.
The vipers of the Centre were checked in January. In two days we checked 113 burrows, and we counted at least 392 snakes on pictures taken with the pipe-camera. While on the first day of monitoring – after a longer cold period – most of the snakes could be found at the bottom of the burrows (20 vipers were in the middle of those, and only one on the surface), on the second day – in milder weather – we found 67 animals near the entrance, and 3 on the surface.
Indicating proximity of spring, despite the long wintery weather, we found ten male vipers on the surface in early March. One of them was very active, its temperature was 24C, while the temperature of the surface was only 6C.
You can watch a selection of our best pipe-camera shots:
