Reminiscences I

As I sit here, surrounded by boxes to take to England and bags to take to the charity, I thought it would be nice to look back over the adventures we've shared over the past six years of The Crete Nature Blog. It all started in December 2013 with Welcome to Lasithi when I introduced you to my home in the village of Ferma on the south east coast of Crete and we climbed the hills, investigated the olive groves and went rock pooling down at the little village harbour.

In series two we moved on from merely observing the plants, insects, birds and myriad other life forms and started to look at The Rhythm Of Life including the flowering times of the plants, the appearance of insects in the Spring and migration patterns of birds. The study of when things happen in nature is called phenology which I explained in what turned out to be one of the most popular blog posts, Phenomenal Phenology.

In series three, A Journey Begins, the journey in question took us from the beach at Agios Fotia high up into the Thriptis mountains on unmarked paths where we inevitably got a little lost or, to be more accurate, we weren’t lost, we just couldn’t find a track going in our direction. But the great thing about blundering about in the wilderness is that you get to see so much more.

This journey took us up into the Thriptis mountains via the Eden Valley but, having got up there, we also had to come back. This we did via The Milonas Valley which was an incredibly beautiful sojourn and included another very popular blog post The Milonas Waterfall in which we went wild swimming in early March (brrr). A nice underwater video at the end of that post from the pool beneath the waterfall.

Having undertaken two major expeditions it was time to re-examine home turf once
more so series five took us on a circular walk (and snorkel) around the village in This Is Ferma including the Wildlife Hotel and The Sea Caves of Ferma. 

It was about this time that I devised the #CreteNature interactive Hiking and Nature Map

with which you can click on any of the symbols and read the relevant blog post. 

This covers the first half of the Crete nature Blogs and I'll try to cover the second half before I leave to explore a new part of the world for me, Cumbria, where I expect we will have many more adventures.

Steve's Books

Spring is just around the corner, the flowers are beginning to bud, and all sorts of litle arthropods will be busy. There are over thirty major groups of these creatures and identifying them is impossible without knowing to which group they belong. Help is at hand with The Quick Guide To Creepy-Crawlies which can be used anywhere in the world and is suitable for all ages. For this, and for other books I have written or have yet to write, you can follow me on Amazon.

Share your nature thoughts, photos and comments on Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog).

Crete Nature Catch-up
Series 1 - Welcome to Lasithi	Series 2 - The Rhythm Of Life	Series 3 - A Journey Begins
Series 4 - The Milonas Valley	Series 5 - This Is Ferma	Series 6 - Upland Villages
Series 7 - The Forty saints	Series 8 - Sunday Strolls	Series 9 -Stormy Weather

2O2O Vision

The Crete Nature Blog is back... but with a difference. It may not always be coming from Crete. So maybe it should be renamed The Crete Plus Nature Blog. Life is a-changing for me at the moment and this coming year is going to be a bit of an adventure, mainly because I haven't got a clue what's in store but I have a feeling that there may be some dramatic and abrupt changes. Watch this space!

But what better way to start the year than a walk in the English countryside on a bright and frosty morning?

This is Wordsworth country; Cockermouth in Cumbria and along the roadside verges a 'host of golden daffodils' are showing their first shoots through the frozen soil ready to burst forth in the first days of Spring.

The trees that will bring a shady green canopy against the hot summer sun show intricate patterns of denuded branches against a Forget-Me-Not sky.

This far north, 54.7°, the morning sun is very low in the sky and illuminates the moss on this branch overhanging Bitter Beck at an oblique angle.

Whereas here, in this little copse the sunlight hardly penetrates at all and eldritch faces grin down from the sylvan gloom.

But let us return now to a warm fire and a hot cup of tea and pause a while en route to look at two of the symbols of the Yuletide just passed. The holly in full berry sustaining the birds through the rest of the winter. They prefer sweeter berries but blackbirds, waxwings, thrushes and robins will all partake.

And talking of the Robin, a more recent symbol of Christmas as opposed to Yule, here is one perching in somebody's front garden.

The daffodils, the trees, the birds and even the hot cup of tea that we are going home to drink wouldn't be here without the insects and their allies. So this year let us look after our creepy-crawlies, as they have been looking after us throughout our entire existence. If they go, we go. It's as simple as that and what better way to start than getting to know a little bit about the magnificent world of the very small? A complete overview of this often overlooked but vital part of our lives can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1694436756

Crete Nature Catch-up

Series 1 - Welcome to Lasithi

Series 2 - The Rhythm Of Life

Series 3 - A Journey Begins

Series 4 - The Milonas Valley

Series 5 - This Is Ferma

Series 6 - Upland Villages

Series 7 - The Forty saints

Series 8 - Sunday Strolls

Series 9 -Stormy Weather
Series 1O - The Grand Tour

Lugano To Venice

As our next port of call, literally, is some distance from the city of Venice I thought I'd book us in at a midway point between the two. By sheer chance the hotel is only a short walk from the 19^th century Forte Marghera which is now a cultural centre and wildlife refuge. I think that this will be a good place to start our explorations. A good place to build a fort, surrounded on all sides by a double waterway and the wildlife starts here below the bridge in the shape of this crab mumbling his way through the residents of the green algae.

The place is an absolute haven for insects. There's a Shield-backed Katydid in the grass alongside a Click Beetle; a Mediterranean Spotted Chafer Beetle getting itself covered in pollen as it feeds on a mallow flower and a rather handsome Leaf Beetle of the Lachnaia genus down there. Hang on, I'll just root him out for a second so that you can have a closer look.

Hello, looks like we've got a bit of wildlife action on this Mallow over here. A ground crab spider, Xysticus sp. has taken a fancy to a small bee for its lunch. You can tell that it's a bee and not a fly mimicking a bee because you can clearly see all four wings and flies only have two. Bee mimicking flies also have much shorter antennae than bees but I think that the spider has them in its jaws. Talking of lunch there's a nice rustic looking restaurant here so I propose that we adjourn.

That was delicious and very reasonable. I liked the complimentary bottle of home made wine. I think that all restaurants should adopt that policy. Shall we go and have a look at Venice? Very pretty, now get me out of here. It's full of hat and tat stalls and camera clicking tourists. Let's find a quiet backwater and have a civilised cup of afternoon coffee. If I hear one more person singing 'Just One Cornetto' they're in for a ducking. Giovanni Capurro, who wrote the original lyric to O Sole Mio, must be turning in his grave.

I have another reason for visiting this part of Venice. Did you notice that small park that we passed earlier? That is the Giardini Papadopoli and it is one of the scenes in my novel, The Magic of Nature of Magic which is now complete . I just want to go and soak up the ambiance and sit with the Lizzies for a bit. These are Common Wall Lizards, Podarcis muralis, and I see that we are being watched over by a Yellow-legged Gull, Larus michahellis. These predominate over their pink legged cousins that you find further north.

Talking of books, The Quick Guide To Creepy-Crawlies is now under final revision and proof-reading stage. I was hoping to produce a paperback version and a Kindle version but as Kindle cannot handle internal hyperlinks (What???) I've had to abandon the Kindle version.

Crete Nature Catch-up
Series 1 - Welcome to Lasithi	Series 2 - The Rhythm Of Life	Series 3 - A Journey Begins
Series 4 - The Milonas Valley	Series 5 - This Is Ferma	Series 6 - Upland Villages
Series 7 - The Forty saints	Series 8 - Sunday Strolls	Series 9 -Stormy Weather

Steve's Books

Not Just For Twisted Women by Steve Daniels  A light-hearted look at life through the eyes of the fairer sex. Kindle Edition 1.99 pounds sterling (or equivalent). Click on the link to the right to read two complete stories for free. Paperback Edition 4.99 pounds sterling (or equivalent).. Read snippets, samples and stuff at Steve's Books

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LINKS:

Share your nature thoughts, photos and comments on Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog)

Explore the region with the #CreteNature interactive Hiking and Nature Map

Cretan Flora Flowers of Crete BIRDS OF CRETE Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)