Great, Matt! That's about as beautiful as bosniensis comes. Bit jealous ;-). 

Thanks alot! And thanks again for helping with some areas! 

As Jeroen and others already wrote - simply great trip! 

and here are some of my photos from Prespes and Florina prefecture http://www.herpetofauna.gr/forum/index.php/topic,363.0.html enjoy ;-) 

Ah man, I wish I could have stayed a week longer! The T. macedonicus are already worth it for me, so sad I couldn't take pictures of the animals we have found at the Olympos region. But real nice pictures the both of you! 

Thanks for the kind comments. Ilias, your photos are great, how did you get photos of the Natrix like that? When I looked at them they all slithered into the water and I was barely moving!! Or maybe I was too obsessed with finding that ammodytes to be bothered about anything else :-)

Bobby, macedonicus is nice, but a future visit at either Olympos of Prespa will surely guarantee you of photos. Just glad we managed to save many of them from certain death in that stupid animal trap we came across... 

Congratulations on an absolutely outstanding trip together with superb photographs - some of the best I have seen of greek herps. Stunning V. b. bosniensis. Also, something I have often wondered about, this is the first time I have personally seen definite confirmation that ammodytes and xanthina are sympatric in NE Greece. 

Hi David,
Yes I thought the finding of ammodytes at an xanthina hotspot was quite interesting, although I remember Ilias wasn't really surprised, maybe he has heard of this before at coastal Thrace? We also found one further inland, but I believe this to be just out of the range of xanthina, but who knows for sure. However the first male ammodytes you see on the photo was found on the road next to the area we found most of our xanthinas (about 10).
On Samothraki both vipers have now been recorded as I am sure you already know!
Matt 

Johan De Smedt also recorded ammodytes and xanthina very, very close to each other in Thrace. Another example that the competitive exclusion of vipers is not all that black and white? Perhaps even rather/partially an indirect effect of species-specific niche differences? 

Yes there is no reason why ammodytes should not be found in xanthina infested areas. I always supposed some would be around, I think the surprise was to find the ammodytes at the exact site with many xanthinas.
Matt 

Great trip with great photos(Matt and Ilias), cant wait to visit Greece again myself, I just returned from 5 days Krk, but I am a little bit jealous... 

Gertjan, you was on Krk now? What did you see there? I am very interested in this island, Krk is my most favourite place in Balcan! 

@ Matt

You wrote about ammodytes and xanthina on Samothraki - do you have the references for those sightings?

Thx a lot
Gerald