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I have a small pond in my front garden with lots of frogs in it. A few weeks ago I was sitting by the pond when there was a lot of movement in the water. At first I thought it was the frogs, then I realised it was a snake! One by one the frogs jumped out of the pond and under the cover of nearby plants. Then the head of a grass snake appeared above the surface of the water, it looked around and moved up out of the water onto the edge of the pond and into cover of some dried leaves (I have a photo). It was quite a large specimen, I'd estimate it to have been about 70cm. It later moved under the hedge and then into a neighbour's garden and wehaven't seen it since. My neighbour also reported seeing a much smaller snake curled up on the side of her pond, it slipped into the water when she approached. she had assumed her fish were being eaten by a heron but now wonders if the snake was to blame.
I have seen grass snakes before but never in a garden setting and feel very priviledged to have had this rare and beautiful visitor in my garden. We also have a fox that visits regularly, hedgehogs, an occasional badger, birds (including a sparrowhawk, and I saw a red kite overhead the other day), bats, butterflies, dragonflies and damsel flies.
I wonder if anyone else has had reptilian visitors in their gardens this summer?
Yes, we get occasional sightings in the garden, we don't have a pond but they have been seen basking on stones, lying in grass next to a hedge and near some compost bins. Very elusive and the best views are always of a retreating snake. So having one in your garden and being able to get a picture is excellent.
This is from a rural setting in Warwickshire.
We have about three regular Grass snake visitors, they use the compost heap to lay their eggs. The last two wet/cold summers have been bad for them, the snakes grew inside the eggs but the weather got too cold and they all died before they hatched.
This year has been as cold and wet and I haven’t seen any sign of young snakes. I will leave it until the middle of September before emptying the compost heap to see if there are any empty eggs in there.
How lucky for you to get such a good view of your snake, we very rarely see more than a glimpse of ours as they disappear into the pond or undergrowth. We do have a number of skins which have been shed and once saw all three together under some corrugated tin.
The Grass snake will have been after the frogs, I doubt if it would take the fish.
Build it and they will come.
we have had a snake skin in our pond for the first time this year. I saw it a few weeks ago, thought a bit of polythene had blown in, but on closer inspection it was a snake skin. The next day or so I saw the snake. Luckily my husband was with me or he would never have believed me. It was quite small and only as round as a finger, a guess at about 16inches long(sorry can't do metric-its my age) it swam through the water and out of the pond and we have not seen any since. The skin was alot bigger than the snake we saw so we think we have more than one.
We have only seen a couple of frogs in the pond this year, we usually have 20 or more and lots of spawn, but I don't think its the snakes that have affected the numbers of frogs. We only had one lot of frogs spawn this year and it did not 'hatch'. Has anyone else had a drop in frogs this year?
We are lucky enough to have grass snakes and common lizards on our reserve here at the Lodge. They can often be heard rustling around in the undergrowth. There is advice on how to help reptiles and amphibians in gardens on our website here