Dancing Adders

A couple of weeks a go now our adders 'danced'. This is such an amazing thing to see, and I have been lucky enough to see it here a the Centre for several years now. It is always one of the signs of Spring for me, something I always look forward to observing, and an experience I enjoy immersing myself in by just laying in the enclosure with them... watching, photographing and being absorbed by the beauty of it.

This 'dance of the adders' is a ritual battle between rival males, competing over a nearby female for a mate. If you want to know more about it, have a look at our BWC blog where I go in to a bit more detail and even have a short video showing some of it in action.

These are just a few photos from this years experience. Despite photographing this for many years now, you always see new things and end up with different photos. Above is my favourite from this season... two of our males dancing almost on top of one of our females, with her not looking too impressed at all.

As well as them dancing, I took the chance to get a few portraits of them while they were busy being distracted with other things! I will share a couple of these next week, including one I am particularly pleased with.

The dance is over for this year now, a lot of lucky visitors managed to see it over the bank holiday weekend, and a very lucky photography group who were here on perhaps the best day for them dancing.

They have since mated, and so possibly some young adders later in the year. Time will tell.

Thanks for looking :-)