Introduction.

With a wealth of wildlife just over the channel it was time for another foray, this time mainly for Amphibians but a few other bits and bobs.

Tuesday 23rd August

With an early hour tunnel crossing we were off heading to our first stop near Geel, after a couple hours sleep we headed to the site, a series of ponds near a river, here we were looking for the biggest frog in Europe. We found a bucket in a pond partially submerged and in it was a load of american bullfrog froglets and a couple of fish. We searched a bit further without any other sightings so headed a short distance to another site. Here we found several adult bullfrogs and some showed for some photos. It was still drizzling and the promised sun was nowhere to be seen as we headed towards Maastricht where we had several sited to check out. The journey across had the most amazing weather I have ever seen. It was pitch black just like night and heavy rain with thunder and lightning truly spectacular. As we reached the site the weather started to improve. The site was a series of pools and damp areas and we quickly located our first frogs mostly green frogs of all shapes and sizes and a small common tree frog which was very nice. The frogs kept on coming with several common frogs and a couple of moor frogs and as the sun tried to come out a few dragonflies appeared. This included our target species of spotted darter amongst a few of the commoner species. As the rain started we departed and 30 mins later we were at our next site and had a nice Jersey Tiger on the walk to the site. Here we quickly found plenty of Yellow bellied toads and an alpine newt and with some sunny weather some reptiles a common lizard and a slow worm. Eager to exploit the good weather we headed to our next site in the Netherlands and the hope of dragonflies - banded darter in particular but it has been a poor year and we could not find any and general numbers were very low but we did get a good selection of common species and a green hawker, also of note were some rather large raft spiders. With time getting on we headed to the last site of the day to try to find the very elusive common spadefoot toads. The site was very picturesque and held plenty of large dragonflies including one dusk hawker, but we did find a few amphibians although not our target species, common newt, alpine newt, northern crested newt as well as a selection of green frogs were all present and a woodcock was flying around as we lost the light. A quick look at another site proved fruitless so it was time for some sleep. Wednesday 24th August

Our first stop was a wooded site in search for Italian crested Newts, but despite an extensive search we had no luck so headed for another site closeby where in the warming weather we had some butterflies and in particular a tree grayling the target for the site. With good weather we headed back to Belgium to a park where we hoped for terrapins and chipmunks. Only one red eared terrapin was located but several Siberian chipmunks were located along with other such exotics as mandarin and wood duck. Our next site was a little tricky to locate but once we did find our way in we were off in search of common midwife toads. The pond had midwife toad tadpoles and we could hear the odd one or two calling, but we did locate two common midwife toads. With time getting on we headed for France and our last site which we managed to locate just before dark. Eventually we found the correct area and could hear natterjack toads and we quickly located a few, but walking round the pond we flushed some quail one which waited until I was within inches before it flew, very nice views but these were not our targets and we quickly found it a parsley frog and we found a few more. We did not need the three days planned for this trip as we managed to see almost all of the targets in two days.

Summary

An excellent trip in which we only missed the Spadefoot and banded darter of the target species so another trip could be on the cards! The near continent has a nice range of wildlife which we don't get in the UK and is well worth a visit.

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