“Ferma is
a settlement in the municipality of Ierapetra on
the island of Crete.
It is situated at the coast, 11 kilometers east of Ierapetra. Its
beach is well known for its beauty.”
That's
the Wikipedia entry for our village which ranks, for completeness,
marginally above The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy entry for Earth
as “Mostly harmless.” I thought that before we set off on our
next expedition it would be nice to fill in a few more details. Last
week we were down in the bay on the “beach well known for its
beauty” so let's wander up onto the cliffs and take a look at the
west end of the village.
The
cliff top path runs from the little harbour and joins the main
Ierapetra to Sitia road near the petrol station. It's a very pleasant
walk with plenty of wild flowers and birds which we did a few years
back (A
Walk on the Cliffs)
but we'll turn off here at this juniper bush and walk up into the
village. I mentioned before that juniper berries are used to flavour
gin but they're good in the kitchen as well. My favourite is
Casseroled
Pork Chops with Juniper and Thyme Gravy.
Here
in the olive groves we have a little overgrown ditch and if we get
down in amongst the greenery we should find a few beetles. Here's one
– a Malachite Beetle, so named from the greenish colour of his wing
cases; malachite being a copper based mineral of similar hue. I see
that you've found another of those black Flower Weevils that we saw a
couple of weeks back (If
Spring Never Sprung)
and the little brown job is a Danacea
of
which we have half a dozen similar looking species here on Crete.
The first and last are both in the same family, the Melyridae
or Soft-winged
Flower Beetles.
As
you can see some of the olive groves are meticulously rotovated while
others are left to their own devices. This is useful for us as we can
hide ourselves in the herbage here and watch the birds in the cleared
grove next door. Male blackbirds, which are all black, have bills
ranging from deep orange to yellow apart from the juveniles which
have brown bills. A male defending his territory will react more
aggressively towards an orange bill than a yellow one and won't deign
to bother with a brown bill – they're a bit like judo belts really.
Incidentally the females aren't too fussed about the colour so long
as the bill is shiny. But that's females for you.
We're
coming up to the main road now, the path is a bit more worn and we
can see the water. Let's flip a few stones and see who's lurking
beneath. Aha, a spider. It looks to be a Ground Spider.
Let's see if we can persuade it out of its silk pouch for a moment.
These spend their day concealed like this and come out to hunt at
night. They run their prey down and sink their fangs in rather than
sit in a web. Venomous, but not dangerous to us humans.
There
are quite a few places to get a bite to eat and a drink in the
village, what say we go and find one?
The
Extra Bit
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LINKS:
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facebook page that accompanies this blog)
See
detailed pictures on Flickr
Read
more about the flora and flora of the island in The
Nature of Crete (Flipboard
Magazine)
Explore
the region with the #CreteNature interactive Hiking
and Nature Map
You have some skills both with the writing and photography, these post worths sharing. Thank you for sharing it with us
ReplyDeleteYou are most welcome.
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