The Framers Forum

All we did was dig a hole in the garden and fill it with water - well, we added a filtration unit, and some fish .... and some plants.

Grey wagtails, Herons (grrr) ducks, moorhens, any bird needing a bath - the waterfall is the place they queue/fight for - all sorts of dragonflies and mayflies, frogs, newts, leeches and freshwater shrimps and the odd snake, slow worms mostly but sometimes a grass snake - usually a very big one, that moves like lightning as soon as you see it.

But yesterday I went to clean the filter - lifted the lid on the first compartment, and there was this little guy.

The first time I've handled a 'real' snake (not my hands in the photo - stepson's)

Before I started actually looking up snakes, I thought the yellow 'V' behind the neck stood for 'Viper' Duh - that's the big tell tale of the grass snake.

Set the camera to 'sports' and froze his tongue - cool.

We get grass snakes all over our village even on the school playing field. Last year I saw one in the garden and quickly did a google search to check it wasn't an adder as it was fairly small. The markings behind the head were described as a yellow collar. Went back in garden to see it slither under the shed.

When we were kids we used to fish some old gravel pits and they would swim across the water. We also used to catch newts in all the local ponds of which there were a fair number created by WW2 flying bombs that dropped before getting to their intended target (London).

John.