{"id":168213,"date":"2025-09-29T13:44:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T13:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/168213\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T13:44:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T13:44:06","slug":"smooth-snakes-thriving-after-slithering-into-devon-heathland-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/168213\/","title":{"rendered":"Smooth snakes thriving after slithering into Devon heathland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Volunteers Liz and Roger Hamling have been surveying the snakes at the Pebblebed Heaths for 15 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mrs Hamling said she had done the surveys so many times she knew the route by heart.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Around the Pebblebed Heaths we have smooth snake refuges &#8211; a sheet of corrugated iron laid flat on the ground, under which smooth snakes like to hide and keep warm,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mr Hamling said he had taken more than 150 photographs of the snakes since 2010 to help gauge numbers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The head of a smooth snake has a distinctive heart-shaped marking and combined with the first few segments of their bodies, which also have patterns, these markings are unique to each individual snake,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volunteers Liz and Roger Hamling have been surveying the snakes at the Pebblebed Heaths for 15 years. Mrs&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-168213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}