Into A Dark, Dark Place

The next obstacle on our route to the Milonas Waterfall would appear to be a densely wooded slope but before we venture down into the sylvan gloom just listen to the birds this morning. The descending trill of the chaffinch; the harsh dzeee of the greenfinch; the machine gun rattle of the Sardinian Warbler all coming from the trees and bushes around us whilst up above the ravens are cronking and a buzzard is mewing. What a lovely start to the day.

Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees as the saying goes but all too often we fail to see the trees for the wood so let’s take a closer look at the woodland make up. The majority of trees are the familiar needle leaved, cone bearing pines but we also some with thin branching, rather scaly leaves and cones that look a bit like footballs. These are cypress trees, named after Cyparissus, Apollo’s young boyfriend who’s grief was so strong after he accidentally killed his pet stag that he turned into a tree. These are both coniferous trees but we also have some Kermes Oaks in here which are deciduous and bear acorns rather than cones. All three are going to be invaluable in stopping us tumbling down this precipitous slope faster than we intend.

The majority of what we are walking on is pine litter and you can see great clumps of it wedged into crevices in the rocks. The good thing about these clumps is that you can wedge a stick underneath and lift them up in one go. Let’s see what’s underneath this one. A couple of mushrooms growing in total darkness and a julid millipede. The mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of the organism of course but by far the greatest mass of the fungus is the mycelium made up of white threads called hyphae which you can see working its way through the dead pine needles. These hyphae secrete enzymes which break down the litter and convert it into fungus food. They are also the reason that we could pull the clump off in one go.

This bank will give us a chance to have a look at the soil profile if I just scrape it back with my trowel. There are three distinct layers and we’ll take a sample and see what we can find. The top layer of recently fallen needles is home to this tiny Goblin Spider on the hunt for even smaller prey such as this Snout Mite that I’ve just liberated from the second partly decomposed layer called the acid mor, a slowly decaying  type of humus particular to coniferous woodlands and moorland. Snout mites are also predatory on things like springtails and nematode worms. The third, paler layer is called the leached horizon where most of the nutrients have been washed out. We’ll take some back to the lab and look at it more closely later.

We seem to have come into a clearing and it’s nice to see the sun again. You don’t see so many flowers in the depths of the conifer wood but up here we have a nice little Romulea, a flower that looks like a crocus but isn’t – they just evolved along similar lines. Have you noticed that many flowers have different coloured centres? This is thought to help guide the pollinating insects in to the food source. The same with those buttercups that we found in the gorge a couple of weeks back. Yes, I know that they look all yellow but that’s because you’re not an insect (not the last time I counted your legs anyway). Being human your colour spectrum only ranges from red to violet (see Inside The Rainbow) but if you were an insect you could see down into the ultraviolet and the buttercup would look something like this – give or take my lousy artwork. Our senses are rather dull compared with most animals and in nature you can’t always believe what you see.

I can hear the roar of the waterfall quite strongly now and I’m pretty sure that will be our destination next week. Unless we find something else to divert our attention on the way.

The Extra Bit

I’ve finally managed to get around to a project that I’ve been meaning to undertake for some time and that is to put all of our little walks onto an interactive map. By clicking on to any of the green hiker icons you can view the blog post for that particular location. Don’t forget that you can also use the search engine on the right hand side of each blog to search for anything in particular. For instance if orchids are your particular thing then just type ‘orchid’ into the search box and your browser will display all the blog posts that feature orchids. You can then use the map to find the exact location of that post. Neat huh? Interactive Hiking and Nature Map

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LINKS:

Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog)

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

The Nature of Crete  (Flipboard Magazine)

Cretan Flora

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)

Where Mary Sleeps

Following last week’s debacle at navigating by churches and chapels I thought we’d give it another go this week and, starting where we emerged onto the road, attempt to find another church further up the valley. 

Ivy (Hedera helix) on Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis)

It’s a lovely mountain road to walk, alongside the plane trees which are absolutely festooned with ivy. Evidence suggests that this does little or no harm to the tree at all in most cases but is, in fact, an incredibly useful plant. Its greenish yellow flowers which should be showing soon are very rich in nectar, so much so that the Ivy Bee runs its entire life around it, and the berries which come in the spring are an important food source for birds. Not content with that, the leaves are eaten by many caterpillar species including that of the Small Dusty Wave Moth which eats nothing else and one of the chemical compounds in the leaves, called Falcarinol, has been shown to kill breast cancer cells. Not bad for a plant so common that we usually walk past it without a second glance.

Seeds buried in leaf litter

Now, before you revert to childhood and start kicking through the autumn leaves, let’s get down on our hands and knees and see who we’d be disturbing. A few small beetles and the odd spider… but this is interesting, look what I’ve found under this stone. It appears to be a small cache or hoard of seeds. Many animals store up food for the winter; traditionally birds are said to cache and rodents to hoard. By the way that this has been placed quite deep and under a stone I would guess that it’s a rodent hoard. There are two types of hoarding behaviour, larder hoarding where a large amount of food is taken back and stored at home as it were – hamsters are well known for this but the wood mouse will do it too. The other type is scatter hoarding, as this appears to be, where small amounts of food are distributed at various locations. Squirrels, chipmunks and wood mice are famous for this and, given the habitat and the fact that we have no chipmunks or squirrels on Crete I shouldn’t be surprised if this was the work of a wood mouse.

Nymphalidae: Hipparchia cretica, Vanessa cardui, Pararge aegerea

That strange creaking and cracking sound? Nothing of great interest I’m afraid – just my knees complaining as I got up. Ah, this would seem to be a far better way to find a church, signposted steps. What a wonderful array of butterflies we have here. There’s the Cretan Grayling that we met last week (see The Journey Continues) as well as Painted Ladies and Speckled Wood bringing the morning alive. These are all members of the same family of butterflies, the Nymphalidae, also known as the four footed or brush footed butterflies. The reason for this being that when they’re standing they appear to have only four legs, the front pair are held curled up under the chin so to speak. These fore-legs, in many species, have a brush like set of hairs upon them. The purpose of these short, fat, hairy legs hasn’t been fully investigated as yet but the two most popular theories are that they enhance the butterfly’s sense of smell or that they’re an aid to communication. So much still to be found out about nature, even amongst our commonest friends.

Kermes Oak, Quercus coccifera with Cynipid wasp gall

Down here a bit further we have some Kermes Oaks. These are very hardy little oaks of the Mediterranean and their name derives from the Persian or Arabic for crimson. You remember that curious looking little scale insect that we found on the plane trees last week? Well, the Kermes oak has its own particular scale insect which was used in the manufacture of an exquisite crimson dye by the ancient Greeks and Romans. I can’t see any on this particular oak but I have found an interesting little gall. This would have been made by a tiny wasp (exactly how is another thing that we still don’t know) and inside is a minute larva thinking itself all safe and snug. It isn’t. That hole on the side could have been made by the larva emerging or by another type of wasp injecting one of her eggs into the larva as it develops. It’s a wasp eats wasp world in there.

Mediterranean House Gecko, Hemidactylus turcicus

Finally, we have reached our little church. This one isn’t dedicated to a particular saint but to an event: The Dormition of the Theotikros, which, in simple terms means the going to sleep (a euphemism for dying) of the Virgin Mary which is commemorated annually by the Greek Orthodox Church on August 15^th. I expect that it’s prettier inside, let’s take a peek. Oh look, there’s a little Mediterranean House Gecko under the eaves. We must have disturbed him as he’s a truly nocturnal animal. I don’t suppose he gives a fig about whether Mary is sleeping or not, he’s just found a good place to lurk and catch insects. Did you know that they chirp like a bird? I’ve never heard it myself but apparently they can also imitate a male cricket and when the female turns up to investigate they pounce and gobble her up. Rather caddish behaviour in my view, after all, it’s just not cricket is it?

 

News Update

I said last week that one of the reasons for my sudden disappearance at the end of the last series was the crash of my database and the need to relocate it. The other reason is that I have been writing a book which is now about three quarters finished. It takes us on a journey from the top of the Thriptis Mountains here in Crete to beneath the waves of the Libyan Sea – but there’s a twist in the form of a nineteenth century naturalist who seems to be accompanying us on our journey. The result, I hope, is literally quite magical and I’ll keep you posted on developments. 

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LINKS:

Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog)

Cretan Flora

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)