Welcome to the Wildlife Hotel

This is it, the Wildlife Hotel. It wasn't designed as such but is an abandoned project that has been this way since before I arrived in 2004. Gradually the native plants have taken over the gardens and the wildlife has moved in. Before we nose around though I'd just like to draw your attention to these poppies down here. To me, poppies used to be those red things that you wore on Remembrance Day or the mauve things in the middle east that provided the world, for better or for worse, with opium. I was quite surprised to learn that there were nearly eight hundred species dotted around the world with nine here on Crete alone including the familiar red and mauve ones. This particular one is widespread but not very common on the island and is called the Red horned-poppy. Presumably on account of that massive, rampant seed pod.

The other flower that is prevalent in this region is the endemic Cretan ebony. This is acting like a magnet to the honey bees and I see that some enterprising individual has placed a couple of hives on the approach way. Don't worry, they won't bother you. You may think that you look and smell pretty but you can't hold a candle to the Cretan ebony. Just look at the air traffic control that's going on down there at the hive – the bees take off and fly out bottom right and approach and land from the top left.

The air may be a-buzz with bees but there's not much in the way of bird life up here today. I can hear Blackbird, Sardinian Warbler, Chaffinch and Sparrow but ten years ago I used to see Buntings, Flycatchers and Linnets up here quite regularly. A sad illustration of the decline in European songbirds unfortunately. Populations of the Spotted Flycatcher that I photographed on the balcony back in 2006, for instance, have dropped by a staggering 89% in recent decades.

Let's rest in the sun and admire the view for a while. There's some nice grass to sit on or a flat rock if you'd prefer. As you can see, I've bagged the one surviving sun lounger. Looks like I'm going to have to share it though. This curious little insect is one of the hoppers. There are four main groups: plant, leaf, frog and tree hoppers. I think that this one is a leafhopper but they're all very similar until you study them in detail. They all belong to the same order, the hemiptera or true bugs, and are most closely related to the cicadas which keep us entertained throughout the summer. Unlike the cicadas however they do not announce themselves to the world in the same deafening manner.

The little hoppers are lovely but I like an insect that you can pick up and make friends with; like this magnificent grasshopper. Isn't he a beauty? I've just picked him up from among those wild oats down there and he's taking being handled gently with equanimity. That's right, you sit up there on my shoulder – pirates have parrots, why shouldn't I have a grasshopper?

That just about wraps it up for this week so it just leaves my new friend and I to lead you back to where we started and next week we'll investigate the top track above the village.

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LINKS:

Share your nature thoughts, photos and comments on Naturalists (the 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

Cretan Flora

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)

This Is Ferma

“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

Those of you with a keen eye may have spotted a slight difference in the quality of the photographs this week. This is because my Konica Minolta, which has given me stalwart service over many years, has finally given up the ghost and I'm relying on my little Nikon Coolpix S33.

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LINKS:

Share your nature thoughts, photos and comments on Naturalists (the 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

Cretan Flora

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)

Communication

How fish school

During last week’s snorkel around this beautiful little lagoon did you happen to notice all the little fish swimming around near the surface? Ever wondered how they all manage to change direction at the same time? Yes, you can put your towel down and sunbathe now but just take a closer look at this couple of little fellows I’ve just netted. Pretty aren’t they? That dark line going from stem to stern is called the lateral line and it’s packed full of hair cells which can detect minute movements and vibrations in the water. These signals are then sent electronically to the brain giving the fish an extremely accurate picture of its environment even in dark and cloudy waters. They can locate prey, avoid predators and, of course, all turn together in a way that would make any synchronised swimming team give up and take an early shower.

Cardinal Butterfly

This is just one of the methods that animals and plants use to communicate with each other and while we’re sitting here enjoying the sun I thought we’d look at some of the other ways they do it. That stunning Cardinal Butterfly that’s just landed behind us for example. Easily recognisable by the way, from the greenish sheen to its hairs.  Bright coloured butterflies semaphore their colours to each other and even the comparatively plain female Cabbage White gives a brief flash of ultraviolet light on each downstroke of her wings when she’s ready for a mate. So, butterflies too have their flashers, not just the girls after a night out in the bars of Malia.

Blackbird

Birds, as we know, sing beautiful songs, particularly the males when they want to attract a mate but even that is not as simple as it seems. During the reproductive season the blackbird, famous for his ability to improvise and embellish his repertoire, actually sings a simplified, functional version of his song proclaiming ‘here I am’, ‘this is my territory’ ‘ready when you are’. All those twiddly bits and sound incorporations (I knew one once who managed to include a police siren into his song) come later when he has time to relax and experiment.

Now, if you could just move your towel a bit – no, it’s not in my way as such, it’s just that you’ve parked it on an ants’ nest that I wanted to talk about. You didn’t need to move it that far away – or quite so quickly. You’ve disturbed the ants now but still, you’ve created masses of communication in the nest. 

Ants have a sophisticated communications network

Ants are what are known as eusocial insects (which is like social but to a very high degree), living and working almost like a single entity. To get this level of coordination you need a pretty sophisticated communications network and the key to this is pheromones, chemical substances that can be detected by other ants through various sense organs such as their antennae.  Female moths use pheromones as well to attract males over long distances and so do we to a certain extent (ever wondered why you were inexplicably attracted to someone? Pheromones at work). But back to theses ants; as well as chemoreception (the technical term for communicating with pheromones) they are very touchy-feely creatures, passing information by stroking each other with their legs and antennae and they are also surprisingly vocal. We can’t hear them of course but they stridulate like crickets – that is, they rub parts of their bodies together, and produce high pitched chirps. Tree dwelling ants go one better, they also send vibration messages back to the nest by drumming their heads against the wood (the insect world not only has flashers but head bangers as well so when we say that certain disruptive elements in our society are “behaving like animals” maybe we should be more specific and say “behaving like insects.”). So what looks like a mass of confusion down there is a highly complex hub of smells, vibrations and sounds ensuring that every ant knows what it should be doing, and where and when it should be doing it. Amazing little animals, ants. Have you got them all off of your towel yet?

Mallow

But what about plants? The idea of plant communication was ridiculed for years (as in the old song parody: “I talk to the trees, [that’s why they put me away]”) but we are now investigating myriad ways in which plants pass messages to each other. I spotted a little drama unfolding amongst the mallows on our way down here so if you pack up your towel and sun-tan lotion I’ll show you on our way back.

Ant and Aphids ona Mallow leaf

Down here on the leaves we have some newly emerged green aphids and an ant. The aphids want to eat the plant and as they do so they will excrete a sugar rich substance called honeydew. This is what the ant is after. The plant doesn’t want to be eaten so it will mount a chemical defence and produce toxins to deter the aphids. It doesn’t necessarily stop there as we now know that some (maybe all) plants produce pheromones which shout the equivalent of  “APHIDS - INCOMING!” to  their neighbours who can then mount their own defences prior to an attack. The question that arises in my mind is – how does the ant just happen to be there as the aphids emerge? Could be he just stumbled across them but we know that the ants’ main method of communication is based upon pheromone chemoreception so, has the ant picked up the “APHIDS - INCOMING!” transmission? Military intelligence in action as it were. This would be counter productive to the Mallow as the ants will shepherd and protect the aphids from predators such as ladybirds. It’s possible that the plants are aware of the ants’ abilities and send out a scrambled pheromone message that the ants can’t decipher and this one did indeed just get lucky. Or maybe the ant has learnt to decipher the code? As always when we start looking at nature in action there are far more questions than answers.

                                                

Until next week – happy hunting and, as Sherlock Holmes would say: the trick is not just to look but to observe.

As always you can see all the pictures including insets in detail on Flickr

Add your own comments and observations by using the comments button at the foot of the page or find out more about Crete nature by following the links below.

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LINKS:

Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog)

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)