Start Of The Adder Season 2018

We weren't out detecting this weekend but all was not lost as it was a chance to kick-off the adder spotting season.

The weather wasn't the best for adders as it was overcast but quite bright with the sun threatening to poke through.
Unfortunately, this area is now quite well known and we could see four people scouring the area looking for adders. What was concerning was that at least two of the group had "handy reachers" which look like litter picking implements. Why on earth would they have these upon them?

We steered clear of where this group was and concentrated on areas where we had seen adders before.
We managed to spot two females trying their best to absorb as much warmth as they could.

We decided to search an area 1km to the east of our first search area.
Another female was located and her eye's were "milky" showing that she was about to slough.

Back to where we'd parked, we decided to look at an area near to a stream as the sun had now decided to shine seeing that we were going home!
This was rewarded by spotting another two female adders sunning it.
Again, one of these was about to shed her skin.
All the adders seen today had a very flattened posture so to as absorb as much heat as possible.
It was very strange that we didn't see any male adders at all!?!?!

Hopefully the male imbalance may be sorted on our next outing?

High Definition images of today's search can be seen here.