Steve's Nature Blog: Martin

The intention was to take Mattie for her first walk along the beach at Flimby, but with a force five gusting up the Solway Firth, she resembled not so much a dog on a lead, but a helium balloon on a string. We headed inland to the village of Crosscanonby to show her the delights of the countryside instead. Pheasants appeared and disappeared into the fields of waving wheat, their raucous cries startling her at every turn. Along the uncut field margins, Carder Bees were busy pollinating the clover.

As you know, I'm always on the hunt for plants to forage, but I was surprised to find this large stand of Fennel in the Cumbrian countryside. Fennel is indigenous to the Mediterranean, and it grew like a weed around my home in Crete. It has spread northwards throughout Europe and is not uncommon down south, here in England. This far north it's a rare find. I helped myself to a fair few fronds. It is also a traditional medicinal plant, good for digestive discomfort and as an eyewash. There were other old medicinals about as well: Herb Robert (liver and gall bladder) and Crosswort (rupture and rheumatism) also Cowslips and Sweet Woodruff, if you prefer your medicine fermented and poured into a glass,

Stinging nettles used to be used to treat rheumatism too (well, it took your mind off it at any rate) and makes good wine. Here though, it is being enjoyed by a whole host of Small Nettle Weevils.

The larvae of these beetles live underground and feed on nettle roots. As adults they come up and eat the leaves. It's not easy being a stinging nettle.

From Crosscanonby we travelled a little further inland to Isel for a walk by the Derwent. The Swifts were feeding above the river which brings me to the age old question: how do you tell the difference between a swift, a swallow and a martin, especially when they're high in the sky? It's all in the wings and tail. Wings first; if the wings are curved, it's a swift – if you lined them up wing tip to wing tip, they'd form a circle. With the other two, it's all in the tail; the swallow has two long tail feathers, streaming out behind and the martin has a short, forked tail.

And what did Mattie think of her first walk in the wild? Find out on Mattie'sPage!

I mentioned my home on Crete earlier. Christina and I spent 16 happy years there, before she succumbed to cancer in 2018. South east Crete is a beautiful place to live and the house is up for sale. Details are with the estate agent in nearby MakryGialos and can be viewed on line at Real Professionals Crete .

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All the best,

Steve

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Steve Daniels Cumbria

The thing about walking on these mountain roads is finding a place to get off them and strike out across country. As they are cut into the hillside you usually find yourself hemmed in by a high and unclimbable bank. The trick here is to look for the place where water crosses the road which can often be spotted by lines of Oleander straggling up and down. Where water comes down we can often go up such as at this spot here. Let’s give it a try. A couple of weeks ago (see The Dew Ponds of Katharo) I suggested that murdering someone by drowning them in a pond where diatoms were present was not a good idea if you want to get away with it; the same applies to poisoning them with Oleander. The mix of toxins in all parts of the plant are far too easily detectable. Just thought you’d like to know. In case you were thinking of murdering anybody.

Autumn birds of the Cretan uplands

Listen to the birds up here this morning. When you’re trying to identify a bird at a distance, as we are here, you can often narrow the field down a bit by watching what they’re doing. The Stonechat likes to perch on the top of bushes whereas the Spotted Flycatcher will use not only bushes but wires, fences or any similar vantage point. Blue Rock Thrushes, as their name suggests, prefer to survey the landscape from the rocks whilst Crag Martins, like Swallows and Swifts, swoop through the air hawking for insects. If you look high in the sky above us there’s a Griffon Vulture who, with his incredible eyesight, takes a wide angle view of the entire valley.

Thorny Broom, Calicotome villosa

We’ll make our way up to the rocks and, although those shorts of yours look very snazzy, I think you’re going to regret them soon. The flip-flops might not have been a wise choice either. This is a very exposed hillside up here and consequently the plants that we’re walking through have to be tough to survive. They’re narrow leaved to conserve water in the blistering summer sun, and low growing and mat forming to protect themselves from the vicious winds that can occur at any time of the year and, as you’ve noticed, incredibly thorny to deter browsers. Many of them bear very similar small yellow flowers and a tip to identification is to try and find the seed. Pods that split open down the side like a pea are all members of the Fabaceae family (also known as the Leguminosae) and this particular hairy pod is characteristic of Thorny Broom, Calicotome villosa, used for beating tyrants by the torturers in Hades according to the ancient Greeks (The thorny bits, not the pods that is).

Autumn Flowers of the Cretan uplands.

The other way of protecting yourself if you’re a plant of course is to be very small and hide yourself in the rocks so let’s scramble up to the top and see what we can find. This is a nice one; Narcissus serotinus. At about four inches tall this is one of the smallest daffodils that you will ever see. The fragile looking little brown job is Euphorbia dimorphocaulon, a diminutive member of the spurge family and the tiniest of them all which you’re almost sitting on is the Autumn Squill, Prospero autumnale. Spotting these little beauties is a matter of practice and luck. After a while you develop a knack.

Wild Pear and Capnodis Beetle

Here we are at the top and so far not a creepy crawly to brighten our day but if you look over there to our left there’s a story going on which involves fruit, worms and beetles and this is how it goes. Those small, shrubby trees are Wild Pear, Pyrus spinosa, and as you can see someone has been assiduously cutting them back, protecting the cut surface with plastic and leaving just one live twig. The reason that they’ve done this I suspect can be found in the sawn logs on the floor. They have some rather obvious holes in them which, if I excavate them with my pen knife, reveal some tunnels of considerable width. Now it just so happens that when I was up here a week or two back I met up with this rather robust and sinister looking beetle. He’s one of the Capnodis who’s larvae are well known for excavating fruit trees from the roots up and is, therefore, our prime suspect. The holes, I presume, would have been made when the adults emerged. A bit more work would need to be done to prove the case for the prosecution but the punishment could be severe. The modern biological control method is to introduce tiny nematode worms into the tree which feed on the larvae.

I am always a bit sceptical of biological control methods especially when introducing new species into an ecosystem (the Harlequin Ladybird for example) as they can do more harm than good but the general consensus on nematodes is that there are good guys and bad guys. Nematodes that target a specific pest like Capnodis larvae apparently fit into the good guys category and no side effects have been reported from their use.

There’s another little mountain road up here signposted to the Church of the Holy Cross. Looks like an interesting one to follow next week.

News Update

If you’re enjoying our weekly wanders around east Crete and are thinking that maybe it’s a good place to come for a holiday (you’d be right) then you may be interested in a new web site that I’ve been asked to co-author. It’s very much under construction at the moment but you can find it here and add it to your favourites for later: https://exploringeastcrete.net/

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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)

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)