Polish mountains herping LOTS OF PICTURES!!

I want to show you pictures of herping in Beskid mountains in Poland. Mainly pics from last three days but for start i'd like to upload here pictures from 2007 and 2009 trips in same region.
Hope you survive it.

In 2007 we found two fire salamanders - they look like Salamandra salamandra terrestris but, if i'm correct, they should not appear there. Salamander larvae are very easy to find in streams, in spring my friend who live there, observe mating alpine (Mesotriton alpestris) and carpathian newts (Lissotriton montandoni) - in 2007 we found their larvae living with salamander larvae in one stream.







This year - first we went to muddy pool where newts and firebelly toads (Bombina variegata) breed. This time we took field aquarium (thanks for idea, juraj!). Forgot to shoot the pool, sorry, but its 2-3 meter long, 30-40 cm wide (divided to 3 pools) and in some area - shadowed. There we found damsefly larvae, pre-morph firebelly toad tadpoles and young tadpoles and alpine newts larvae - friend said that this spring there were no breeding carpathian newts.









Next place is well-known for us small spring, near hiking path, where tourists like to set a fireplace and fill the water in spring with crushed glass. Spring ends in small pave well from where someone probably gets water to house as we saw there some device in well. In well were 20-30 salamander larvae and we managed to get out 15 of them and put back to spring, we also put more stones and moss on cascade to secure more larvae from flowing into well and created smaller water body between spring and cascade. I killed some leeches living there too. Water was ice cold, that aquarium glass misted over. Food for larvae were mostly Gammarus (water scuds), that live there in high numbers. Frogs (Rana temporaria) also like to visit the spring.










End we explored new area. Long road, stream along and cut trees.
VERY lucky find- just morphed salamander!


Little frog

Road turns, stream flows straight through quite big pipe... Some hours after that, in night, i found there another morph!


At the end of pipe i spotted another larva.

Under stone i FINALLY found another, some weeks older salamander morph


Return home - very nice frog lady.

On break i moved some stones and found dozen of Anguis fragilis, but they escaped fast so this is the best picture.


Night falls. Our first spot on road - i guess in english it's european common toad, but translating from polish name - grey toad, Bufo bufo. I found these anurans in dark cause they're eyes were shining when i turned my flashlight on them.

Rana temporaria

Another well - we got from it another two morphs or advanced larvae that could not leave this tank.

At night in stream nearly 20 larvae emerged from moss.

This year, no adult salamanders, but it was good trip.
Stream



I collected some mosses. My first-morph-newt got a new furniture in it's little home

Very nice pictures, thanx for posting. It amazes me how despite the large distance, the fauna and flora of your area looks remarkably the same as the north of Spain.
The Salamandra should be S.s.salamandra judging by distribution.

A little note, i obviously don´t know polish law, but at least here most bog areas are protected and Sphagnum species and some liverworts are indeed protected. Collection can result in fines. You should probably check.

Yeah, i see that normal, rocky streams all over the world - in Spain, America or even Hong Kong look nearly same. I never heard about protection of Sphagnum moss in Poland and one i got was growing in high numbers on streambanks.

About Salamandra subspecies: this is how look normal specimens photographed by my friend in this area, those two striped newts were our only encounter there. (first two photos aren't from this area)
http://www.amphibia.pl/index.php/galeria/caudata/salamandra_salamandra.html

Great shots, thanks for sharing! It's always exciting for me to see field pictures from other parts of the world.

thanks for sharing the pictures , great looking animals. Congrats.
Are Bombina Variegata population common in Poland? , sadly here in north Italy they are so rare and the situation get worst year after year.

In this area i found only one adult and morphs/morphing tadpoles, but in other mountains were dozens of them, inhabiting very long, muddy stream. I think it's a question of habitat - they don't like too fast and too clear water, in places like those they are more common than toads or grass frogs. In Poland most rare amphibians are Bombina bombina and Triturus cristatus, but i think not too rare. Badly amphibian situation get worse every year nearly everywhere...

Yes, it should be S. s. salamandra as Azhael says. Just because it has stripes doesn't mean it is terrestris ;-) In all populations there are always animals with different coloration pattern. Typical terrestris are more citron-yellow and have a different morphology, like a rounder snout. But don't forget in Germanny there is a large intermediate zone between the two subspecies.

Great Photos Janusz ! That looks like some really nice habitat. Thanks for sharing.

Great post! I enjoyed the text and photos alot! I like the way you wright english, it sometimes sounds like hiku poems to me...

Very interesting pictures and information, another good visual documentation of caudata habitats.

vide said:

Great post! I enjoyed the text and photos alot! I like the way you wright english, it sometimes sounds like hiku poems to me...

Click to expand...

Write Perhaps some sentences i create built like i would say it in polish, so you about them can have feelings like this reading my posts.

Janusz, thank you for an excellent field trip account. Your photos are very impressive. I notice your photos are all on photobucket - please bear this thread in mind in the future because it is quite common for people to forget they made a post like this and move or delete their photos on the external image provider, thus leaving us with an empty thread ;(.

Yeah, i saw it while i was looking for photos of specified sals or newts on this forum, but, John, i'm not deleting pictures from my photobucket, so they shouldn't disappear from this thread, and, as i see, photobucket is not cleaning oldest photos from my account.

Next spring i will visit this region again so you will get more pics, hopefully more adult salamanders and, for me most important, adult newts!

We have our own photo storage here for members in order to get around this problem.

Great field account! Bombina and Salamandra are two genera I'd love to see in the wild sometime.

Mike

And i would love to see Cynops orientalis in nature. Also Pelodytes punctatus and Euproctus/Calotriton species are fascinating me.

Excellent photos and account. Thank you so much for sharing! I love the young salamander pics. Great work.