Over the last summer, we’ve been finding a few good spots to find Fire Salamander around Tübingen. Recently, we invited a bunch of folks from work who’d never seen them to come along with us.

We headed out, and found our first Fire Salamander before we even hit the forest, in the long grass along a small road.

The first of many

Entering the forest, we found this spider, which was quite big by German standards.

Not a Salamander

Not long after, we saw this Smooth Snake (Schlingnatter). It looked to be hungrily approaching a Slow Worm (Blindschleiche), but I only got a crappy photo of the snake before I scared both off.

Not a Salamander

Along a bit, we saw one of the more disgusting finds I’ve had in a while, a large beetle and a baby harvestman eating a dead earthworm.

Yuck!

And then we hit the jackpot…

Salamander 1
Salamander 2
Salamander 3

And finally a beautiful frog to finish it all off (I think it’s an Agile frog, but ID is annoying with these).

Not a Salamander

In total, we saw 19 Feuersalamandern, several common toad and agile frog, heaps of insects, and a new snake species for me! I think our colleagues were pretty happy to have come.