Field herping, looks great eh? All those amazing pictures on insta, the tales of adventure and mishap on podcasts, drunken chats after reptile shows, who wouldn’t wanna get into field herping? what could be easier or more fun, right?
Yeah… Sooo let me tell you the real stuff. Remember no one posts the shit stuff on Facebook or the crap pictures on insta, social media is a place of joy, where lips are always pouted, boobs are always perky and field herping is so easy ball python breeders could do it…
So who the f$%& am I to go on about field herping, right?? Sooooo, I’ve been herping for 25 years plus, I’ve herped in around thirty countries, and numerous islands… I am the top British lister for Euro species, having only around six species left to photograph in situ, in the wild. I’ve herped in Asia, the Caribbean, Middle East, Australasia and Europe..and the good old U.S. of A (USA ! USA! USA! Boorah! pry my gun from my cold dead hands, etc) Now I’ve explained that I had done the odd trip, rather than keyboard safari in the comfort of my mums basement, let me tell you about one of my recent trips to illustrate my point.
Getting to Greece
A trip to the lovely Pindus Mountains in Greece, then on to an uninhabited Greek island… I had two major targets for the trip, the newly split Vipera graeca, formally Vipera ursinii graeca. A snake as sexy as a weasel in a cashmere tracksuit. Stripy and venomous, what’s not to love? Secondly, the Pori Island wall lizard, Pordacis levendis, not pretty, in fact just a little brown lizard around six inches long including the tail but cool in its own right, as its entire distribution is less than the size of the field on which you ‘Mericans play the ridiculous game you mistakenly call football (nobody pads up in Rugby, just sayin!)
So I left home for the two hour drive to the airport at 0200 (that’s eight hours before most of you get out of your pits..) After the usual post-9/11 security fun, I boarded the five hour flight to Athens, the capital of Greece for all you homeschooled kids. More security fun followed getting out of the airport and I had an eight hour wait for my internal flight. What sensible people would do is sleep.. I am not sensible, I am a herper, so I took some local transport and began herping at the Parthenon, a big ancient temple. Temps were about 35 degrees Celcius and herps were quickly found like Ocellated skinks, Chalcides ocellatus, and Hermann’s tortoises Testudo hermanni along with geckos and an unidentified snake.
Sadly, it was time to rejoin the tourist masses as I headed back to the airport. A quick internal flight later and I had landed close to the Pindus Mountains. At this point I had had no sleep for around 32 hours so I may not have been the most pleasant to be around. I met the rest of the team, a well respected Dutch herper, Bobby, only the third person ever to see all euro species in situ, Thomas, a very proficient Swiss herper and Matejes, a Dutch birder After the usual hugs and hair ruffles we set off for our accommodation.
Basic is good when herping. There’s no point paying for towels folded into swans when your only going to spend minimal time in your room. After a beautiful four hours of sleep we were up and heading into the mountains. The area of the Pindus we were in was not the picturesque, chocolate box mountains, these are steep, sloping hills, devoid of any vegetation except thorn bushes.
For the next eight hours, we scanned the slopes in 40 degree Celcius exposed heat, ankles taken a battering on loose boulders, shredded by thorns and eaten alive by horse flies as big as the aircraft I flew in on. At no time were we on level ground, always on a steep slope, so calves were soon aching. As darkness fell we had seen exactly zero herps so we headed back to the four by four and drove heads down, stinking, sweaty , bitten and scratched to our accommodation. It was dark, we could eat, find a nice restaurant maybe, and sleep for a blissful eight hours until sun up or we could not be snowflakes, put on our big boy pants and go out to look for geckos and the rear fanged, gecko feeding, Telescopus cat snakes.
After four hours, some trek bars, and shit coffee, we gave up. A few geckos found but no snakes.We returned back to home base and had a blissfully decadent four hour sleep. This process was repeated for three days.. same heat same flies, same thorn bushes, same sleep deprivation.. no herps to be seen. On the fourth day, we were stirred by Matajes shouting he could see an eagle with a snake in its talon.. that was the highpoint of the trip so far and a long ethical debate followed on whether we could count a sighting of a snake through binoculars clasped in an eagles’ claw as a tick.
As the day drew to a close, I was bitten by a horsefly so large I swear it drained a couple of pints of blood from me! My leg started to balloon, and soon I couldn’t bend it at the knee, not fun when trying to climb up and down rocky slopes. We decided to give it one more hour then cut our losses, leave the mountains and move to the island.
As I was thinking of heading back to the car I heard Thomas scream! Unusual as being Swiss he is quite emotionless. I hobbled up to him, some two meters above me, not easy as my leg was now discoloured, grotesquely swollen and as painful as a slug filled viv. I eventually reached Thomas and there at his feet was a stunning female Greaca. Such a beautiful snake and my last venomous species to tick off the list in Europe. After the usual bottom slapping and congratulations an epic photo shoot ensued.
Back in the car, in pain, dehydrated, sweaty and stinking, we drove four hours to our next destination, stopping briefly en route to photograph the endemic rock lizard, Hellenolacerta graeca and wall lizards, Podarcis peleponnesiacus in a little gorge. We boarded a ferry and sailed to the island of Kythira.
– Moving on to Kythira –
At our coastal destination on Kythira, we checked into our room. We then went in search of our guide, that after months of emails, had agreed on a boat hire that would undertake the journey to the uninhabited island of Poros. Getting to the island is about an hour journey in a fast boat at around 30 knots. Getting onto the island was a different matter…
As with all well planned herp trips, plans fall apart like a prom queens dreams as the guide was nowhere to be found. Not answering calls, no one had any knowledge of him. We had traveled thousands of miles to get to this island and it looked like we would fall at the first hurdle. We decided we needed food and beer to help us think, adapt and overcome.
The village we were in was a tiny place, built around the harbour. We ordered our food and a lot of beer, to help rehydrate and began talking to the locals. A few hours later, we managed to find a fisherman with a fast boat that for the bargain price of 1000 Euros, would deposit us on the little piece of rock in the ocean. So with pants properly pulled down, we went to bed.
After six hours of sleep and lots of self applied first aid on my swollen leg, we met at first light in the harbour. We were joined by Kevin, a notable UK herper and his lovely wife Suzanne. We boarded the boat and were soon speeding over the waves to the island, after an hour of wave surfing we arrived greeted by sheer walls, and Eloneora’s Falcons. It took some time for the boatman to find a spot onto which we could jump onto shore and scramble up the cliff sides.
We had two hours on this little speck of rock that is home to the endemic Pori wall lizard which we found in abundance. It wasn’t difficult on bare rock with sloping flat topped areas, but due to the bite on my leg, I was walking like a long haired blonde boy on his first morning after his first night in prison. We were lucky enough to see a gecko as well.
All too soon the boat returned and holding photo kits above our heads, we waded/swam back to the boat. We made landfall back on Kythira glowing in the knowledge that we were some of the very few people ever to see levendis, in fact I think I am the first Brit to see it in situ!
Beers and scoffs followed. We slept and eventually the Dutch and Swiss gang left for their respective homes. I stayed an extra day on Kythira with Kevin and Suzanne, finding the grass snake Natrix natrix, whip snakes, Hierophis gemonensis and geckos, Crytopodian and Hemidactylus.
Kevin dropped me at the airport, I flew to Athens and then home. I lost 8 pounds and it was two weeks before my leg was back to normal.
Still fancy field herping???
All joking aside, it’s the company and thrill of beating the odds that keep us going back.. who’s up for the next trip?
