The
gully seems to be running into a bit of a ravine which is absolutely
inundated with Giant Cane. Despite its massive height it is, like
bamboo, a type of grass. Also, like bamboo, the young shoots are
edible and you can eat the boiled rhizomes apparently. I haven't
tried it myself and I've never seen any recipes for it (so I'd be
inclined to take that information with a bit of caution or maybe even
a pinch of salt) but I'll pass it on anyway. It also looks fairly
impenetrable but we won't let a little fact like that put off
intrepid explorers like us. I'm sure that we can slide our way
through somehow.
OK
so they were pretty unforgiving but look who's waiting for us; a
Common Darter. Only he's not so common, not at this time of year
anyway. It's a fairly recent discovery that certain dragonflies
migrate, the same as birds
do [1].
And how do we know that? Because some fool entomologist managed to
fit a dozen of them with the world's smallest transmitters and follow
them in a light aircraft for 58km over six days. Research is ongoing
and I'll put in my fourpenn'orth with this set of seasonal maps which
I've put together from iNaturalist.
As you can see
you'll only find them in Winter around the Mediterranean. By Spring
they're up as far north as the Netherlands and in Summer and Autumn
they're in Scotland and Denmark.
You
may have noticed that these canes are getting thicker and I'm
beginning to think that someone should have put an electronic
transmitter on me as I'm not sure which is our best route out of
here. Meanwhile we have some pretty little Clematis
cirrhosa
down here which is quite, quite poisonous (see Entrapment
In A Virgin's Bower) and
some Myrtle berries, Myrtus
communis, which
are most definitely edible (see Fly
Feet And Lizards' Ears). All of which is rather academic at the
moment as we seem to be effectively caged in on all sides and we've
traced a tortuous and probably unretraceable route to get this far.
All is not lost however as I am indebted to Phil Bebbington who sent
me this handy little GPS tracker for our travels. As I've been
marking our finds as we go along I should at least be able to track
our route back by following the trail of breadcrumbs as it were. So,
if I just pick the appropriate screen I get a picture of... what
appears to be an earthworm in its death throes. Our route has been
more circuitous than I thought. Another feature of this little gizmo
is that we can combine our current position with satellite images
which means, in theory, that we can see our shortest route out. I say
'in theory' because I haven't yet mastered how to do that yet. I can
tell you where we are to eight decimal places of latitude and
longitude but that's not exactly helpful at this moment. We will
have to rely on the old naturalists' trick of escaping from river
gullies: proceed in any direction you like so long as it's up.
It
never fails and we seem to have emerged on the same side of the gully
as we entered which is a bonus. There's a whole flock of feral
pigeons sitting on a telephone wire over there and I swear that
they're laughing at us. Ignoring the incongruity of a telephone wire
stretching over a pinnacle of rock and dangling down into an
inaccessible cave (this is Crete and it's best not to dwell on such
conundrums if you wish to preserve your sanity for any length of
time), the reason the pigeons are laughing is that they don't get
lost in cane breaks. Exactly how they manage to navigate long
distances is still under investigation but if, like me, you thought
that it was all down to reading the Earth's magnetic field and/or
following the sun's arc then you'd be wrong. Both are useful as
compasses but not much cop if you don't know where you're heading
for. Like ourselves in the cane break, without a satellite image to
see where we were in relation to the edge of the canes, knowing our
latitude and longitude and the direction of north was of no help. You
need a map and so do the pigeons. After forty years of research[2]
it would appear that your homing pigeon probably uses olfactory
mapping as a primary navigation tool. They know what home smells like
and if you take them to a new location they'll sniff their way back.
And on that incredible note I think we'll make our way back. Can
anyone smell the car?
The
Extra Bit
On
the subject of navigation I would propose a study of island postmen.
Here on Crete the smaller villages have no road names and no house
numbers. If, like Phil Bebbington, you are kind enough to send me a
piece of equipment that you have finished with and pay extra for
parcel tracking then the Post Office will hand over delivery to a
courier. This means that it will eventually arrive in the near
vicinity of my home, having travelled across Europe in ever
decreasing circles, and after a flurry of telephone calls I will
retrieve the package from an exasperated man in a little white van
from outside the village shop. Pop it in the regular post and my
postman will (almost) invariably deliver it to my door a week or two
later. How he memorises where everybody lives is a feat worthy of
scientific investigation.
Thanks
again for the GPS Phil, it really is a most appreciated gift and I
will get to grips with combining it with satellite images!
Photographic
Bit
Many
of you have asked
me
what photographic equipment I use so for details of aperture
settings, shutter speeds etc. my pictures will be on Flickr
within
a few days and that has all the geeky stuff. Pictures
were edited with FastStone Image Viewer and combined with Microsoft
Paint.
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Common darters are all over the place round here in September
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