Tales of the Riverbank

If we just push our way through these giant canes we should find the…splash!...stream. I’ve found the water; my right foot has at any rate. I’ve also found a rather interesting character wandering over this rock here. An eight legged arachnid but not a spider. She is one of the hard backed ticks (like books, they come in hard back and soft back) and I think that she’s a Brown Dog Tick. Although they prefer dogs as hosts (and we have plenty of hunting dogs in this area) they will take blood from any mammal including us. As she can host bacteria that would result in us catching Mediterranean spotted fever she is best avoided – like the plague as it were. I think we’ll press on.

This looks like a nice spot to sit and rest for a while with a little waterfall gurgling beside us. I don’t see any ticks about and fortunately they are not particularly numerous so let’s probe about in the leaf litter and see who’s at home. Ah, a tiny, bright red, harmless bug. Very small, very colourful and very vulnerable; which is probably why it’s hiding in the leaf litter.  Bugs have to grow up just like we do and this one is just a toddler so to speak. Later on it will moult into new clothing, changing styles (much as our children do when growing up) and finally reaching the full adult livery of our old friend the Soldier Bug. Then, of course, it’s off to find a mate and start the cycle again as we saw last week.

Well, we’d better move on but it looks as though we’ll have to crawl through the undergrowth once again. These magnificent plants with the mottled stems and white patched leaves are Dragon Arums which will throw up a huge purple spathe next month. Very impressive and I’m sure we’ll see some when the time comes. Meanwhile, I’ve just dislodged a piece of bark from a rotting tree stump and a couple of woodlice have rolled out. Some woodlice can roll up into a tight ball like this and, like Ernie Wise’s wig, you can’t see the join. These are commonly known as pill bugs in the family Armadillidiidae. The odd thing about these two are those lumpy bits called tubercles. They’re very pronounced and require a bit more investigation as I don’t think that they’re common woodlice. You may think that a woodlouse is a woodlouse is a woodlouse but there are over 200 species in Greece alone and they’re a fascinating group of animals to study.

The river bank is a great place to find rotting logs and tree stumps and gently peeling away the outer bark can often reveal a kaleidoscope of life going on. Let’s have a look under this one. A worm, but not an earthworm. See the way that it’s anchored its backside to the wood and is swishing away at the front? That is characteristic of a Nematode. They don’t have the ability to crawl like earthworms. Did you know that they can eat up to five thousand bacteria a minute? That is, if they don’t get eaten themselves first. There seems to be a fungus growing up not far from its head and there are such things as nematophagous fungi that prey specifically on nematodes; catching them in glue traps or lassoing them. I don’t think that this is one of those though. I think that it is in far more danger from that little scorpion there. I have an irresistible urge to call “He’s behind you!” in true pantomime tradition. By the way, the nematode is definitely an ‘it’ and not a he or she. Like slugs and snails, nematodes are hermaphrodite with both male and female sexual organs.

I think that we can stand up now and if we push our way through these canes we should get back to the track – eventually. It’s like trying to break out of prison isn’t it? Here we are, scratched, torn but happy, back on terra firma and there’s an inconspicuous little flower down by our feet. A little flower with a big history. It has been used to mummify Egyptian royalty, sail Roman ships,  provide a good night’s sleep for European nobles and oil the bats of the England Cricket team. It is Linum bienne or pale flax, the wild ancestor of the cultivated flax that has been used to make linen for millennia and the source of linseed oil. It also gave us the words line, lining, lingerie and linoleum; and to think I almost trod on it.

The Extra Bit

Flax and linen have gone out of fashion a bit but a couple of years ago I was at the Cotswold Show in England when I came across this flax fabric and flax oil resin canoe from Flaxland. I want one. I wonder if they’ll give me a discount on the strength of this link? (They make lots of other marvellous linen products as well).

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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)

North By North West

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)

Cretan Flora

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)