Bog Myrtle & Peat

I’ve been really keen to get a good picture of an adder for years. They never appear when I have my camera, and they never stay around long enough for me to go and get it. When I found a baby adder in some young heather yesterday afternoon, I decided that my moment had come. My camera was in the car about two hundred yards away, and the only problem I had was how to keep an extremely wriggly and energetic snake in one place while I dashed back for it.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had taken my wellie off, picked the snake up and dropped him into it. It was only then that I realised how stupid I had been. It had seemed like the most obvious thing in the world as I did it, but I quickly came to terms with the fact that I had deliberately put a venomous snake in my own wellie.

Hopping back to the car through stacks of sitka brash was an unpleasant experience which I wouldn’t like to relive, but at least the little adder was still in situ when I got back a few minutes later. I poured him out onto a sitka stump and then had a few minutes to photograph him before he slithered off again. In retrospect, it was well worth it to get a good picture, but maybe I could have come up with an easier and less stressful way of doing it.