The female adder from this post on adder courtship from April has been sunning itself all summer at the same place by a local forestry track. I have been checking up on it most days and today it was ready to give birth to five tiny little snakes. They all seemed ready to shed their skin for the first time within minutes of being born.
New born adder - Vipera berus
New born adder - Vipera berus
New born adder - Vipera berus
New born adder - Vipera berus
New born adder - Vipera berus
The mother snake - looking a little bent out of shape, but recovering.
I saw this adder mating back in May. Since then it has been basking in the same place most days. Then this morning there were three baby adders curled up in the grass next to it!
The adder breeding season is one of my favourite fixtures in the nature-watching calendar. Just for a few days of fine weather in the late spring, the female adders go into heat very like a dog or cat, and all the male adders in the area are drawn in.
Adder - Vipera berus. Two males jostling for position by a female (the brown snake)
The males have a particlar wrestling 'dance' which they perform to determine which of them is the stronger. The winner chases off the loser and returns to guard the female from all comers.
I see adders throughout the warmer months of the year, but this is the only time when they are very active and not at all shy about human onlookers.
Adders will bask even when the sun is occluded by thick cloud as part of their thermoregulatory regime, though they tend to bunch up into tighter coils as the amount of solar radiation decreases.
Unlike most other European snakes, male and female adders can usually be distinguished by their scale colour - males being greyish with black markings while females are brownish with dark brown markings. However, both sexes show very varied colouration. The female above looking really quite grey, while males often have greyish, rather than black markings. Below is a male adder for reference.
