I don’t think we get grass snakes in Scotland. I’ve heard of them but nobody every mentions seeing them up here. Adders are pretty rare too - I’ve seen just one in my lifetime, on Ben Lomond, and I’ve done a lot of walking in the hills. Maybe I’m heavy footed and they can tell I’m coming from miles away!
I do have a stone walled garden filled with lovely frogs and handsome toads though, so I get my kicks that way. Both cats adore frogs. We regularly find them brought inside to play with, and left unharmed and slightly confused in our dining room.
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Could be anything turn up anywhere Sam,in these days of trucks and motor ways ,slither into some palletes one place and slither off in another.
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I should be on the other thread, Scotland brings me to another rant, these bloody people go to your lovely country and hack down living trees for canp fires when there is dead wood all around,leave their crap everywhere.
No wonder William Wallace wanted to boot us all out.
Ah, it’s not only foreigners who do that. Same as everywhere, locals do a fair bit of dumping and vandalising too. You should see the area around T in the Park after all the youngsters have gone home…filthy little beasts.
Sadly, you won’t see a grass snake as far north as Scotland because they are cold-blooded egg layers and therefore cannot survive the Scottish winter. Adders are warm blooded and also give birth to live young which means they can live as far north as the Arctic Circle. Pretty amazing for a reptile, eh? If you have seen one there may well be more that you haven’t seen as they have very sensitive hearing and avoid humans.
Frogs and toads are some of my favourite wildlife. I seem to get plenty of both and I also have a walled garden. Perhaps that’s not a coincidence as warmth from the walls seems to attract the snails and slugs they feed on. I also often find common lizards both in the garden and inside the house. Just last night I went outside to put something in the bin and came back to find one had popped through the open door. Cheeky…
Sam x
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Adders are warm blooded? Well I never knew that! I wondered why it was the only snake in Scotland (apart from the odd escapee). I love frogs and toads too. Had a massive toad in our garden for a few years but haven’t seen him for a while so I suspect the winter got him. Perhaps he got too big for his winter house…Alternatively we have a plague of pheasants (the local estate rears them and releases them so they can shoot the living daylights out of them - the smart ones come into the village and stay safe!) so perhaps they eat toads…
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Oh that’s sad about your toad 
Prime suspect for killing toads (and goldfish) in my neighbourhood is the heron. I don’t know what pheasants eat, but most birds will eat quite a variety of things, so I wouldn’t count them out…
Love Sam x
