A few weeks ago I was showing some fellow great crested newt eDNA surveyors around Wat Tyler CP when we spotted a grass snake in one of the ponds.
I went in for a closer shot and it dived under water and into some blanket weed for a short while. It came up backwards, which I thought was odd, but it was soon clear it had something in its mouth.
As it moved around it became clear it had caught a great crested newt. A friend had witnessed this last year, but I never thought I’d be lucky enough to see it myself.
It was struggling to manipulate the newt which was wrapped up in the blanket weed
I eventually got it free of the blacket weed.
But the newt was still alive and was unsurprisingly resisting being eaten!
But eventually the snake won and proceeded to eat the newt.
For all these shots I was shooting at high ISOs as it was pretty late in the evening and the area of the pond this took place was in shadow. I’m pretty impressed how the K-3 high ISO and anti-shake handled this though.
Eventually the grass snake swum off into the marginal vegetation to eat its meal.
Neil brilliant set of images mate, if you are able to please share them with Froglife. Alan 🙂