Perivolakia – Rooftops and Pergolas

From Voila we'll make our way back to the main Sitia-Makrigialos road, travel south for a bit and then take the turn off for the village of Perivolakia. We could take a left at Etia and cut across country but I'm none too sure about the road surface and I'm a coward. Sometimes this village is spelt Perivolakia (which means pergolas) and sometimes Pervolakia (which means rooftops) and we have one of each on the left here. We also have a cascade of Mesembryanthemum flowing down this wall being pollinated by a couple of Hymenopterans. The big purple/black one is a Carpenter Bee and the little black one with the red legs is an Ichneumon Wasp. These wasps lay their eggs in the larvae of other living insects which troubled Charles Darwin somewhat. In a letter to Asa Gray, an American naturalist who spent much of his time promoting the idea that God and science were not mutually incompatible, Darwin wrote “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars”. It all depends upon your interpretation of “God” I suppose.

The path that we're on leads eventually through the Per(i)volakia Gorge to the Kapsa monastery and is waymarked with red arrows apart from at this little gully where it isn't. Which shall we take; left, right or centre? Middle for diddle? That was lucky, a little red arrow about twenty yards up the track (well, the Cretans did invent the labyrinth). I think we'll just go as far as those Cypress trees up there and have a scrabble around. Can you hear that Raven cronking away to our right somewhere? There he is, announcing our presence to all and sundry. Incidentally, the Cypress tree is named after Kyparissos, one of Apollo's boyfriends who accidentally killed his pet stag. Overwhelmed by grief he turned into a Cypress tree. Not a common occurrence, even in ancient Greece.

That was quite a hill that we just climbed so I think we'll rest by the wayside and take a look under a few rocks while we get our breath back. A nice couple of snails here, the two-toned job sitting on the fennel stalk is a Chocolate-banded Snail, Eobania vermiculata. The vermiculata part means noodles. Apparently the shell pattern reminded its discoverer of vermicelli which goes to show that you should never ask a malacologist to name something just before lunch. The other one is a Green Garden Snail which are collected from the wild in these parts at this time of year when they are most active. We humans have been roasting snails and eating them for over 25,000 years and it wasn't the French who started the trend in Europe but the Spaniards (or least-ways the Homo sapiens who were living on the Iberian peninsula at the time ¹).

Having found our snails we could do with a few vegetables to accompany them so how about some asparagus? As you go trampling over this golden hillside in search of it (which I doubt you'll find) you are crushing beneath your feet a perfectly acceptable substitute. This is Field Eryngo and, although it is the young shoots that you can use in place of asparagus, the roots can also be cooked as a vegetable and in addition you can candy them for dessert if you wish. That's lunch settled then. Looking down the hillside you can see the rooftops of the village so I think that Pervolakia without the 'i' is probably the more appropriate name.

Let's walk back down over these heather covered rocks until we regain the track once more. I have read tales recently of rather aggressive so called 'gypsy' heather sellers in the UK chasing people down the street trying to force their foil wrapped sprigs of lucky purple heather onto people. Here is a quick answer to them: “It's the wrong colour”. Purple heather is no more lucky than a three leaf clover, it is white heather that is supposed to bring good luck. The origin of the superstition is Scottish where it is purported to grow on ground where no blood has been shed. Given the country's bloody history it is somewhat scarce. An alternative derivation from that same country is that it grows over the final resting place of faeries but that's just heaping one myth upon another. Here in Crete we have two species; this pink heather, Erica manipulaflora, and the Tree Heath (which is white), Erica arborea. Scottish heather by contrast is Calluna vulgaris which is predominantly mauve with the occasional white variation. So you can tell your 'gypsy' charm seller that if she'd care to pop up a Scottish ben and get you some lucky white heather you'll consider buying a sprig.

Back down in the village the taverna has a colourful display of pot plants and on one of these we have a Large White butterfly, Pieris brassicae. You may recall that a couple of weeks back in Sklavoi we came across some of her caterpillars feeding on a caper bush, Capparis spinosa. I mentioned at the time that although they preferred Brassicas they had quite a range of food plants. I am indebted to Antonia Aga at Butterflies & Moths of Greece & Cyprus for alerting me to the fact that this is a new host plant observation for this species and a check with the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Database at the Natural History Museum of London confirms this. Which just goes to show that there are new observations to be made even with regard to such commonplace insects as the Large White butterfly.

The Extra Bit

¹ http://www.newser.com/story/192789/cavemen-first-ate-snails-30k-years-ago.html

For the stargazers among you there is quite a lot going on this week. If you venture out after midnight tonight (13^th) you can observe the Geminid meteor shower. Just before the dawn you can see Jupiter and Mars between the Moon and the Horizon and on Saturday evening, with the aid of a small telescope, you may be able to see the rock-comet 3200 Phaeton. http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/3200-phaethon-rock-comet-how-to-see

Photographic Bit

Many of you have asked me what photographic equipment I use so here's a quick rundown on the cameras used for each picture. 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.

Picture 1 Nikon COOLPIX S33

Insets Canon EOS 1300D

Picture 2 Nikon COOLPIX S33

Insets Canon EOS 1300D

Picture 3 Nikon COOLPIX S33

Insets Canon EOS 1300D

Picture 4 Nikon COOLPIX S33

Insets Canon EOS 1300D

Picture 5 Nikon COOLPIX S33

Insets Canon EOS 1300D

Picture 6  Canon EOS 1300D

Inset 2 Nikon COOLPIX S33

Pictures were edited with FastStone Image Viewer and combined with Microsoft Paint.

*********************************************************************

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)

Sikia Beach – Frozen in Time

In previous weeks we've been back in time 800 years and joined the Venetians in their hill fort at Monte Forte and 2,000 years with the last of the Minoans at their place in Praesos. This week we're going back over 20 million years into the geological past to a beach that you will no longer find in any good beach guide to Crete. Lift a little patch of this massive slab of rock with your fingers (which is surprisingly easy to do) and you can rub the sand away from the underside with your thumb. It's covered with various lichens on the surface but let's go up and see what plants have colonised the edges. Plenty of Heather, as you'd expect on a sandy soil, and down among the roots some beautiful little autumn flowering Narcissi. We also have some spherical heads of Alliums. Garlic, onion, chive and shallot are all Alliums and we have about fifteen different species growing wild here on Crete. As to which these are I'd have to check with our botanist friend, Steve Lenton who is a man who really knows his onions. I never could get the hang of them: when I was a young man I disappointed my future father-in-law by confusing his onions with his gladioli but in fairness his vegetable plot did abut his flower border.

We also have plenty of stones and rocks for flipping which, as you know, can keep me amused for hours. Oh look, our first beetle of the autumn. In fact, this is quite a rare one called Pimelia minos, which is endemic to this end of the island and fairly easy to recognise as his back has the appearance of avocado pear skin. I've only come across this species twice before; on Koutsounari beach and at Bramiana resevoir. Pimelia may be a rare species but he is one of a group of 20,000 or more Darkling Beetles that can be found worldwide very often in dark places such as under stones which gives them their common name. 

Now who do we have here pollinating our heather? This is one of the Tachinids, a rather bristly bunch of flies as you can see. They have a tendency to lay their eggs in the larvae of other insects, particularly the caterpillars of butterflies and moths, but some prefer adult beetles or their larvae so it's no wonder our Pimelia friend likes to spend his time hiding under rocks. So would I.

I've found some old bricks over here. Let's rummage. You've got some little orange dots moving about on the bottom of that one. Here, take the hand lens and tell me what you see. They're sort of peachy? Nice. How many legs have they got? A very small, eight legged creature with peachy skin. May I take a look? What you have there is a Red Velvet Mite, quite pretty in their own way but rather predatory when they are adults. In their earlier life stages however they are parasitic on other insects. I've just found another Pimelia over here and look what's nestling in the crook of his front leg, a little velvety orange dot. Poor old Pimelia, he's not safe anywhere.

Well, what do you think? Quite a lot of life for a bare stone slab isn't there? But there's another strange creature that I want to introduce you to and you'll be pleased to hear that it is best observed from a small taverna in the nearby village of Sikia. You'd have thought that with so many wonderful creatures in the world there would be no need to make them up but mythology is full of them such as that lovely mermaid over there. If you are crossing the Aegean in a boat you may meet up with Alexander the Great's sister, Thessalonike, who was turned into a mermaid after her death. If she asks after her brother tell her that he's alive and doing well. This seems to pacify her. If you tell her he's been dead for centuries she gets all upset and starts churning up the waters.

The Extra Bit

The trailcam has been busy photographing Great Tits and Italian Sparrows galore during the day but this little fellow appeared overnight. He's a Black Rat, Rattus rattus. I'm not too worried about the occasional Brown rat around the garden but I'm not so keen on having the black ones about. However, as the trailcam also picked up three different cats investigating the bird table at night it is hoped that he won't stick around too long.

Photographic Bit

Many of you have asked me what photographic equipment I use so here's a quick rundown on the cameras used for each picture. 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.

Picture 1 Canon EOS 1300D

Insets Canon EOS 1300D

Picture 2 Canon EOS 1300D

Insets Canon EOS 1300D

Picture 3 Canon EOS 1300D

Insets

Picture 4 Canon EOS 1300D

Insets Canon EOS 1300D

Picture 5 Canon EOS 1300D

Insets

Extra Bit Trail Camera RD1000

Pictures were edited with FastStone Image Viewer and combined with Microsoft Paint.

*********************************************************************

LINKS:

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

The Final Ascent

Just before we begin our push for the summit there are a couple of other little things in this cave that I’d like to draw to your attention. This apparently dead spider up here for instance. As a spider grows it gets too big for its skin but unlike us its skin is its skeleton and although it is flexible enough to allow the spider to move it doesn’t grow like our bones do. Periodically then a spider needs a new skeleton. How it does this is to start absorbing the inner layers of its existing skeleton and use that to start growing a new skeleton inside. It also produces a fluid to keep the old and new skeletons apart. There is an obvious flaw in this arrangement in that the new skeleton must necessarily be smaller than the old one (like Russian dolls) which obviously defeats the object. Undeterred by this drawback, the spider reabsorbs the separating fluid so that the new skeleton is loose within the old one, pumps itself up until the old skeleton cracks and then bursts out. This new skeleton however is extremely soft and flexible and also folded to some extent. The spider then undergoes a growth spurt to inflate the new skeleton to its maximum before it hardens. Result; one new, bigger spider and one discarded skeleton like this one here.

 

The other things are these curious looking objects growing in this crevice. If I just cut a bit of the surface off with my penknife…ooh, look, it’s like Turkish Delight inside. My guess is that it’s one of the Pannariaceae family of lichens. We’ve discussed lichens before of course in A Kingdom In The Pine Woods but I don’t think I mentioned that they come in eight different forms. The commonest are foliose which have a leafy appearance, crustose which are crusty, and fruticose which are branched in a fluffy, thready sort of way.  This one has flat, overlapping scales if you look at it under the hand lens, see, which is one of the less common, squamulose types. Lovely word isn’t it? The other four types?  Placodioid, leprose, filamentous and those with no visible thallus. Well, you did ask.

I’m sure we haven’t exhausted the possibilities of this little cave but we’d better get on or we’ll never reach the top. Last week we were discussing how the rocks and minerals help to define the character of an ecosystem.  What we’re trundling up now is known as karst and it’s formed when rain dissolves the limestone. All rain is slightly acidic as water reacts with the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to produce a weak solution of carbonic acid. The more CO² there is in the atmosphere the more acid the rainwater becomes. Add in a few industrial pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and various nitrogen oxides and you have the problem known as acid rain which has an adverse effect on virtually everything you can think of. Some plants, like this heather (Erica manipuliflora) for example, positively thrive on acidic soils which is why there’s so much of it around. I’ve just thought of something: the girl’s names Heather and Erica mean the same, it’s just that Erica is the posh version and Heather is common. Moving on. There’s a little grasshopper in that patch there, see if you can catch it. Too slow. Still, he’s more used to bouncing around at this altitude than we are so you’re excused.

Whilst we’re on the subject of rain have you noticed what’s heading towards us? That’s thick, black nimbostratus cloud to the north whereas if you look over your shoulder to the south, that’s fluffy, white cumulus cloud. The wind is picking up too as you’ve doubtless noticed and it’s blowing north to south. This is obviously not unusual up here as you can see by the shape of the trees; they’re growing practically horizontally and pointing very decisively due south. I reckon we’ve just about got time to get round these rocks to our left, breast the crest, and then it will be time to get off the mountain. Weather plays a big part in what lives and dies up here and we don’t want to be among the latter.

We’ve made it. All the way from the sea at Agia Fotia right up into the heights of the Thriptis mountains overlooking the village of Monistriaki. The other white rectangular blobs you can see down there are greenhouses. Agriculturally, Crete is a very productive island; not just the olives and olive oil for which it is justly famous but tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and aubergines are all being grown for the tables of Europe in those unsightly edifices. At these heights we’re very much in vulture territory and that one wheeling about up there is a Griffon Vulture. Massive birds with wings that could cover any one of us laid out on the floor. They were in decline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mainly through eating poisoned bait, but this century, thanks to conservation efforts, they seem to be bouncing back which is good news. It’s getting a bit chilly up here now. Thankfully the rain seems to have held off but we’d better not push our luck – we’ve got a long walk back.

The Extra Bit

Told you it was going to rain didn’t I? Ok, so I didn’t predict a hurricane but technically we didn’t have one; we had a medicane which is a horrible portmanteu word (Mediterranean + Hurriccane). They are rare events but predicted to get less frequent if more intense as the climate warms. We didn’t have it too severe down here in the south east but the normally dry gullies of Ierapetra had a thorough clean out. Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_tropical-like_cyclone

***********************************************************************************

LINKS:

Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog)

See detailed pictures at http://www.inaturalist.org/login  (search - people-stevedaniels-observations)

Cretan Flora

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)