THE FEW bright sunny days of early spring are often the best time to see our native snakes. Keep your eyes open for a patch of bright sunshine, even on a chilly day and you may see one of our three native snakes.

Snakes are cold blooded, so after a winter of sleep they need to warm their blood sunbathing. If your walk takes you over rough land you might find a snake on a warm rock or patch of hard soil.

Absolutely the best place to find them is under a sheet of scrap metal, corrugated from for example, lying on the ground. So nature reserves even lay down squares of metal to attract them. If you do find something suitable, carefully lift it to see what might be warming itself underneath.

Most likely in my experience will be a slow worm (Anguis fragilis) — which is not a snake at all but a legless lizard. Don’t try to pick it up. It can easily shed its tail to escape. In fact many slow worms will already have lost their tails and may have grown a new, shorter tail that never seems to fit perfectly.

The commonest actual British snake is the adder or viper (Vipera berus). This is Britain’s only venomous snake.

If an adder injects venom when it bites — it doesn’t always — it can cause serious symptoms including pain, redness and swelling around the bite, sickness and vomiting.

I have friends who claim to have been bitten by an adder who say it is no worse than a nasty wasp sting. Although no-one has died from an adder bite in Britain for over 20 years, my advice is if you do get bitten get medical assistance as soon as possible.  

The adder remains common, but loss of suitable habitat is threatening this unique species. Also there are many people who think any snake, particularly adders, should be killed on sight. Non-human predators include birds of prey, crows and even pheasants.

Male adders are usually silvery-grey. Females can be copper or brown. Both have a distinctive, black zig-zag pattern along their backs. Totally black adders are sometimes seen.

Fully grown adders usually measure between two feet and two foot six (60cm and 80cm). Their young are almost perfect miniature replicas of adults just six inches (17cm) at birth.

Adders feed primarily on small mammals, such as voles and mice and lizards. They will also eat frogs, newts and small birds and their chicks. They are active during the day and use their venomous bite to subdue their prey.

Adders mate after emerging from hibernation in spring, when males engage in elaborate dances as they battle each other to mate with females.

Adders give birth to up to a score of live young in late summer. They have been known to live for more than 10 years.

Adders hibernate through the coldest part of the year. From around October to March they sleep in sheltered, dry spots such as old rodent burrows or within fallen trees.

They are found in open habitats such as heath-land moorland and woodland edges all across Britain but not Ireland. The adder is the most northerly occurring snake species in the world even in the Arctic Circle.

Now let’s look at the grass snake. Here normally I’d put the scientific name in brackets to save confusion with similar species I might be writing about — but that isn’t easy with the grass snake.

As recently as 2017, reptile experts decided that grass snakes found in Britain and indeed in Western Europe would be reclassified as a new species (Natrix helvetica) to separate them from those in Central and Eastern Europe (Natrix natrix).

Whatever the experts call it, this is Britain’s longest snake. They can exceed a metre (3ft 3in) in length. The species is typically grey-green in colour. It has a distinctive yellow and black collar around the neck and black markings along the length of the body.

Don’t confuse it with the adder, which has a distinctive dark zigzag pattern along its back. Far too many people, particularly gardeners and dog owners think that anything that looks like a snake should be beaten to death with a stick — this despite all British reptile species being protected by law.

Grass snakes are found across most of England and Wales, but not in Scotland or Ireland. The species can occur in a variety of habitats, including woodland, but is normally found close to water. It may occur in gardens with ponds and plenty of vegetation. I have seen them swimming — like some miniature Loch Ness monster — in ponds and canals.
 
Grass snakes have a number of tactics to try to deter predators including ignorant humans. They may hiss, release a foul-smelling secretion or play dead. Even when threatened, grass snakes rarely bite, but may strike out with their head.

Frogs, toads and newts are a grass snake’s favoured prey, but they will also take fish, small mammals and birds. With no venom, grass snakes rely on the element of surprise to hunt. A snake will strike out and grab its unsuspecting prey, swallowing it whole. Often, the prey is still alive when swallowed.

Grass snakes are the Britains’s only egg-laying snake. Eggs are normally laid in a sheltered location within rotting vegetation. Compost heaps are often a favoured spot. I found nearly 40 grass snake eggs in my compost heap a year or two ago. They hatched into perfect miniature replicas of their parents.  

Eggs usually hatch in late summer or early autumn. Only a minority of the young will reach adulthood, with many falling prey to predators such as herons, birds of prey, pheasants and even hedgehogs.

As cold-blooded reptiles, grass snakes spend the coldest part of the year — October to about now — hibernating in tree roots, fallen trees, compost heaps and rabbit warrens.

Our rarest native snake is the smooth snake (Coronella austriaca). I have only seen one once in the wild and then only while in the company of a real snake expert.

The smooth snake can only be found at a few heath land sites in Britain confined to sandy heaths in Dorset, Hampshire and Surrey. Reintroduced populations exist in West Sussex and Devon.

It looks a bit like an adder, but lacks the distinctive zig-zag pattern along its back. The smooth snake can be distinguished by its more slender body, round pupils and less well-formed dark pattern on its back. It is usually grey or dark brown in colour.

It can grow up to 70cm (28in) in length and live for 20 years.

They bask in the sun during the day and hibernate from October to April when they would struggle to warm up enough to be active and hunt. In spring, males compete to win females who incubate their eggs internally and give birth to four to 15 young in September.

The smooth snake is a constrictor, coiling up around its prey to subdue it and often crush it to death. Harmless to humans, this snake preys on sand lizards, slow worms, insects and nestlings.

Despite its superb camouflage, the smooth snake does have predators: birds, such as pheasants, carrion crows and birds of prey and foxes, badgers and weasels. When caught, this snake will strike, but its bite is not venomous, so this is just a deterrent.

I cannot finish any article on British snakes without mentioning some escaped and deliberately released exotic species. We had, or perhaps still have, two six-feet-long Burmese pythons living on the canal tow path near here.

Some exotic species are simply pets grown too big to keep, but others, despite the fact that the release of exotic species into the wild is a criminal offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, are deliberately introduce by so-called enthusiasts.

One is the beautiful six footer the Aesculapian snake (Zamenis longissimus), a tree climbing snake from Central Europe. Colonies in Colwyn Bay, Wales and in Regents Park, London, started the invasion but now the snake is becoming commonly seen all across England and Wales.