Folding into the high moor between gloomy mats of heather, a shock of clear green moss skirts a disc of watery pools. In one the water heaves and starts to boil as the lined, emerald coils of a meadow twist slide into examine. Flickering its branched tongue, Snake parts the vegetation with its chunk-shaped open as its smart unblinking eyes strain to identify the slightest change. Finding no draw of quarry, the turn abandons its explore, and with flowing alleviate winds off back across the water, disappearing into a tuft of rushes.

Encounters such as these, with Britain's principal and most plentiful snakes are surprisingly familiar. Widespread in England and Wales, while pink in Scotland and absent from Ireland, the prairie meander prefers damp lowland areas and may regularly be seen sunning itself on the verge of a course or swimming sinuously across a shallow fishpond.

Grass snakes will victim on lizards, nestling birds, mice and voles, but newts, tadpoles and frogs from the immensity of their diet. The prairie meandered tracks its victim by trail, for although its unblinking, flat stare, its eyes are not well developed and only much use for detecting faction. Nevertheless with each flip of its pronged tongue the bend exactly tastes the air for traces of its next meal.

Lacking the acrimony of the adder, or the constricting coils of the downy bend, the prairie meander relies on slyness and a lighting speedy register to knock its victim, Once a frog or newt is in its grasp, the bend dislocates its inferior jaw and then leisurely inches first the greater and then the lower jaw over its victim pending it is swallowed full, regularly appearing as a conspicuous swell in the twist's stretchy and muscular tube like body.

Wherever promising, the bend catches its prey journey first. This minimizes the peril of the biter being bitten and makes the prey easier to swallow. Most victims then speedily drown in the turn's many spit, before the digestive juices get to work.

Because the wind squanders none of its energy on charge tender, a large meal can last it a week. Nevertheless being cold blooded does have its disadvantages. To become active enough to hurt, the meadow twist must first elicit its body temperature - which it does by sunbathing.

On a midsummer's morning when the morning temperature is above the critical 15C, the meadow twist will be active presently after sunrise, catching any gullible frog or newt and then sunbathing until the sun becomes too fierce around noon, when it will glide into the shade. Nevertheless in cooler harden it must exhaust longer periods basking before it is fit for the pursuit. This reliance on the sun means that by the end of September it is strained to obtain out a cushy disguise, such as an old rabbit hideaway, where it can hide afar the extent of winter frosts.

When the gentle fingers of jump catch down into the meander's home to awaken it from winter's slumber, the twist emerges slothfully, and for the next week or two will finish every opportunity sunbathing. Once wholly revived, the urge to mate drives the males off on the trail of the females which display an evocative aroma. Once a right mate is found the two snakes will bask together, sometime for days on end. Eventually the chap will become aroused and open sliding over and around the female. Flicking his tongue over her skin and thrusting his supervise into her coils he will attempt to make her untwist so that they can lie region by edge and mate. After mating, but over the six week mating point from April to May, each meander may have some partners.

In mid-June the female starts looking for some place to lay her eggs. A manure heaped, where the affection generated by the putrid vegetation will develop the sticky white, gristly eggs, elder ones up to 40. Nevertheless because idyllic nest sites are infrequent, many females often lay in the same place - foremost to a load inlay and stories of plagues of snakes.

The babies snakes are six inches long when they emerge but grow instantly, shedding their skin for the first of many moults when they are two or three weeks old. In their first year they will grow five inches, adding a spread four inches in their second. By their year the male grass snakes will be around 20 inches and sexually mature. Females mature in their fourth year when they will be about 26 inches long, Growth then slows, and, once mature, the snake will start thickening sooner than lengthening. A middling female grows to 30 inches and a male to 26 inches.