Fine Weather For Ducks

 

It's Cumbria. It's November. It's raining. Obviously. The River Cocker is filling nicely, as it exits Crummock Water, wends its way down into Cockermouth, where it joins the Derwent, and flows past my front door. Both rivers are now above their normal high level, but still behaving themselves for the moment. Prodding around in the wet leaf litter, and beneath the bark of rotting logs, turns up a White-legged Snake Millipede. These are one of our commonest millipedes and useful little creepy-crawlies. They chomp their way through decaying vegetation, liberally seasoned with mildew and algae, and return the nutrients to the soil.

The path to the lake takes us through mixed woodland and there are a few fungi to examine. The first one is an important one to recognise, because it looks like a puffball (many of which are edible). However, the edible puffballs are white, whereas this one is a dirty brown colour. It won't kill you but it will make you ill. As young puffballs are one of the best 'shrooms to forage, it's important to recognise this look-alike; the Common Earthball. Wild Food UK has an excellent article on puffballs which you can read here. The other two look to be Honey Fungus (edible when young but can be confused with a nasty little 'shroom called the Funeral Bell), and Yellow Staghorn (which is rubbery and tasteless).

Crummock Water is not looking it's best today, as there seems to be more water in the sky than in the lake. The water temperature is about 5C. This I know, because my little sister went swimming in it the other day. She is in Wim Hof mode. Personally, when it comes to dousing my body in cold water, I'm more Wimp Off. I've just found something I've never seen before. It's a baby Oak tree. I think I'll take it home and watch it grow.

It's fine weather for ducks, so let's go over to Siddick Ponds and see if we can find some. The usual gang of mallards, moorhens and mute swans, but we also have a Little Grebe out there, and a pair of Domesticated Swan Geese. These delightful looking geese originally hail from China and the far east, but escaped domesticated versions can be found almost anywhere in the world. Having said that, they're not common, and I haven't seen them before.

We've some Great Cormorants out there as well, but turn your attention to the path for a moment, because those swathes of orange berries up there are Sea Buckthorn, one of the richest berries in vitamin C that you'll find anywhere. One teaspoon of berry juice will give you all the vitamin C you need for a day. It is also rich in vitamins A, K and E and is ridiculously expensive in health food shops. Grab a handful and make a cup of tea with it.

And finally, back in the lab, look what I picked up at the auction house last week. This beautiful stereomicroscope. It was manufactured by Cooke, Troughton and Simms, probably in the latter part of the 1940s, and has the registration number M60907. I'm intrigued by the ornate brasswork and wooden base, which makes me suspect that it is not a standard production model. The wooden box contains four interchangeable lenses (which I haven't worked out how to change yet) and a Carl Zeiss binocular loupe. As you can see from the inset picture of some moss, it is still in perfect working order. I had intended to sell it through my shop Steve's Vintage Collectables but, somewhat selfishly, I've decided to keep it for myself. There's some pretty nice stuff on the shelves though, if you're looking for ideas for Christmas presents:

All the best,

Steve

And books always make good presents. They're easy to wrap for a start!

£14.99

Beetles and Butterflies; spiders and scorpions; woodlice and worms. How do you tell them all apart? To say nothing of crane flies, dragonflies, bee flies and yet more butterflies. Are they all flies? If not, why call them so? If you're fascinated but confused by the beautiful world of the very small, then this is the book for you. 82 pages of information on all aspects of the world of minibeasts, with over 100 photographs and illustrations, this book will help you track down and identify any arthropod, in its adult or juvenile state, anywhere in the world. See all of my books at author.to/SteveDaniels

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The Problem With Icarus

A beautiful sunny start to 2018 and I wish you all a Happy New Year. The other day I passed the back of a curious concrete structure south of Lithines and I decided to stop and walk around to the front of it. Here it is, come on I'll show you. Once upon a time these hexagons were all mirrored which would have been a spectacular sight for that buzzard up there. Despite looking like something out of a Bond movie, it was actually an early solar power experiment. Crete is no stranger to discovering the power of the sun of course. Back in the day an engineer called Daedalus was imprisoned on Crete with his son Icarus by King Minos. In an ingenious escape plan Daedalus made wings of feathers and wax for the pair of them. Icarus flew too close to the sun, the wax melted and he fell back to earth with a splat. Actually both Icarus and the story crash at this point because the higher you fly, the colder it gets. Far from melting, the wax was more in danger of icing up. The result would have been the same of course.

Many animals shun the heat of the Cretan sun by hiding under rocks and with so many of these hexagons lying around in the undergrowth I reckon we can have a flipping good day finding some of them. Lets start with a couple of myriapods and dispel a few myths about legs. As children we were taught that centipedes had a hundred legs and millipedes a thousand (and their names reflect this). Neither fact is true. Myriapods, the group to which they belong means ten thousand legs and that's wrong also. Centipedes can have anywhere between 30 and about 350 legs (this one has about 40) and even the most leggy of millipedes only has 750. Our curled up friend here has about120. In addition to this they grow to adulthood by adding segments and legs as they develop, starting with as little as three segments and six legs, so counting legs is not a good way of differentiating the two animals. The trick is to look at the arrangement: centipedes have one pair of legs per body segment, millipedes have two.

I don't know if you've noticed but there's a door in the floor over there which can only mean one of two things. It's either a portal to another dimension or a flat-pack fridge (I often wonder what IKEA do with ideas that don't quite work). Let's open it up and find out what lies within. Corrugated cardboard which seems to be of interest to hundreds and hundreds of ants. I wonder what they find so fascinating? When reading about ants one often comes across the prefix 'myrm' (people who study ants are myrmecologists, seed dispersal by ants is called myrmecochory and so on) and the words come from the Greek 'myrmex'. There is an ancient Greek myth regarding Aeacus and Aegina who grew up alone on the island of Aegina. Getting rather bored of calling out “Aegina” and getting the response “Are you talking to me or the island?” (which wasn't a very good joke in the first place but pales considerably after the hundredth repetition) Aeacus asked Zeus to provide a bit of alternative company. Never one to do things by halves Zeus turned all the ants on the island into men and women and they were known as the Myrmidons who later fought with Achilles at Troy. There is an alternative version in which the Myrmidons were supposed to have been descended from the son of Zeus and Eurymedusa whom he seduced whilst appearing in the form of an ant but that seems somewhat impractical on many levels, even for Zeus.

Moving on to this Lentisc bush for a moment we seem to have something interesting going on. The spider is our old friend Cytophora, the Tropical Tent Web Spider, going about her business of cocooning food trapped in her web. But I'm rather more interested in this little bug that she seems to be ignoring. If I just extract it and turn it over in my hand... Yes, despite the faded colours which indicates that it may have been trapped for some time, it is definitely Zelus renardii. This Assassin Bug, you may recall, is a newcomer to Europe having been discovered on mainland Greece in 2011and here on Crete by ourselves in 2014 (see Red Autumn). Now the question is, why has she not parcelled it up for later consumption? We'll have to keep our eyes out for further instances and see if this is just a one-off or a more general occurrence.

Whilst we're on the subject of dead insects I've just spotted a deceased grasshopper on the floor here. This is one of at least three types of bandwing grasshoppers with reddish wings on Crete which you normally see as just a flash of red, like a miniature firework exploding beneath your feet, as you walk through dry scrubland like this. It is only when they have passed on that you can get a chance to open up their wings and admire their exquisite tracery. The patterning also helps to identify the species. This one is the Slender Digging Grasshopper, Acrotylus patruelis.

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The Milonas Waterfall of Crete

Cyclamen creticus, Anacamptis collina, Fumana arabica

We seem to have emerged from the woods unscathed and the waterfall now lies directly ahead of us. We’ve had to take quite a detour to get around those imposing cliffs but it should be quite a gentle stroll today (famous last words) with plenty of opportunities to look about us. Let’s start with a few flowers that are heralding the arrival of spring later this month. In the shade of the rocks among the pine litter we have the white nodding heads of the Cretan Sowbread which is a type of Cyclamen; the yellow Fumana, a type of rock rose which we saw budding a few weeks back, is now in full flower; and our first orchid of the season: The Fan Lipped Orchid. 

Lucilia ceasar visiting Euphorbia dendroides

Many flowers have lovely scents to attract insect pollinators which we greatly appreciate but some, like this tree spurge here, have a pungent odour which we find somewhat off-putting. Some people have likened it to a decomposing corpse. Fortunately I have never had the experience of smelling a three day dead body so I can neither confirm nor deny but it certainly seems to be attracting these Greenbottles. Not everybody’s favourite insect but they’re quite beautiful when you look at them closely and useful too. Not only do they help to cleanse the planet of rotting bodies but their maggots (which feed on dead animal tissue) have been, and still are, used medically in maggot therapy. They are dropped into a wound such as an ulcer where they not only remove all the dead tissue but also secrete antimicrobial fluids that sterilise the wound.

Cicindela campestris mating

Have you noticed these little green beetles scurrying around on the sandy ground? They’re Tiger Beetles, so called because of their predatory nature. Notice the way that they sprint and stop in a series of jerky runs. This is because they run too fast to see where they’re going and they have to stop and visually reorient themselves. They hold their antennae straight out in front of them to stop them bumping into things. There’s a pair mating here look (in graphic detail if you look closely). I hope he wasn’t running at full tilt when he commenced – the female would have got the shock of her life.

Chalcides ocellata, Rumina decollata, Julidae family

We’re nearly there now and I see that we’re into stone flipping territory so let’s see if anyone is at home. Now here’s a strange group of bedfellows. An Ocellated skink, still hibernating by the way he’s remaining immobile and blinking at me sleepily, three Decollate snails and a Julid millipede. I say odd bedfellows because a skink’s diet generally includes snails and millipedes although I believe that this particular species prefers spiders and beetles. I wonder if the snails and millipede know that? It still seems like us cuddling up to a hibernating bear but nature is full of surprises.

Veliidae family

Well, here it is at last, the Milonas Waterfall, at 40m vertical drop it is the highest streaming waterfall in Crete. There’s a lovely pool here at the base that looks ripe for a bit of pond dipping so let’s go for a paddle. That’s rather refreshing isn’t it? We seem to have some small bugs swimming on the surface that may be worth a closer look. They’re rather quick and not easy to photograph but the body shape and size, the fact that they’re not doing the backstroke and the plated appearance of the abdomen make me think that they are Riffle Bugs. These are small predatory water striders typical of this sort of habitat but I’m not 100% sure. What do you think?

The Extra Bit

You know, that pool does look rather inviting, did you bring a towel? Come on then. Let’s go for a dip. Don’t be a sissy, the snow’s melted and there’s not even any ice on the surface.

Time for a dip (short video):  https://youtu.be/RUybOxhLqRg 

The Hills Are Alive

Galatella (Galatella) and Autumn Squill (Prospero)

When faced with a valley leading into exciting looking mountains many people are tempted to grab the Nordic walking sticks and stride off towards the horizon. Naturalists, however, do not stride; they potter and probe and poke about which is what we shall do today by ignoring the peaks for the moment and turning due east to clamber up the side of the valley. It’s steep but not particularly high at this point although I’m sure that the views from the top will be worth the modicum of effort involved.

We have some nice little autumn flowering plants on the way up. This little yellow job with the strange projections is a Galatella; part of the daisy family which you will only find in East Crete, Karpathos, Rhodes and south west Turkey. The mauve flower on the other hand is a bit of a botanists nightmare as it comes in many different forms (known as a ‘cryptic species complex’). It’s an Autumn Squill and is closely related to the Sea Squills (see In An Octopus's Garden).

Sage (Salvia)                         Cistus (Cistus)

Whilst we’re on the subject of plants you may have noticed on our climb that we have stumbled over, round and through a number of cistus bushes, but down here by my foot there’s a little sage bush just starting out in life and, as you can see, the leaves are very similar. So how do you tell the difference? Touch and smell. The sage is soft and velvety with an aromatic smell whereas the cistus is rough and slightly sticky and, to my nose, odourless. Despite their similarities they are not even in the same family.

Plants of the same species that look unrelated and unrelated plants that look the same – who’d be a botanist?

Spiky Leaf Beetles (Hispella)

Meanwhile, sitting on a cistus leaf, looking as though they’re intently watching something going on below them, we have a couple of Spiky Leaf beetles. I haven’t come across these before, gently pass me one up would you and we’ll have a look at him under the hand lens. Apologise for disturbing him, we’re all part of Earth’s great panoply of life, so he’s a distant relation. Just look at those spines on the wing cases, a predator would think twice about picking him off as a snack. I’ll just put him back with his companion and let them continue watching whatever it is that they are finding so fascinating.

Mushroom (Russula), Millipede (Julidae), Scorpion (Euscorpius)

This looks like a nice spot to sit and rest our legs awhile with the autumn sun filtering through the trees and dappling the ground. There may not appear to be much going on but if we scrabble about in the pine litter at the base of the trees we may just find…ah, here’s one… a Russula mushroom. The trees and the fungi, as we’ve previously discussed (see A Kingdom In The Pine Woods) have a symbiotic relationship so there’s a strong connection here. There is another connection if you look into the base of this clump I’ve just unearthed, a host of Snake-like Millipedes curled up in the bottom. It would appear that they simply adore these mushrooms. You can’t take these things for granted of course, maybe the mushrooms repel would-be predators such as the scorpions you’ll find in those rocks over there and thus offer the millipedes a safe habitat. As far as I know the relationship hasn’t been studied.  It may seem tranquil here but there’s interconnected activity between plants, fungi, primary consumers and predators happening all around us if we take the time to observe it and there is still so much that we don’t yet know about the world around us.

Common Darters (Sympetrum)

It’s nice to see that the dragonflies are still with us so late in the season. Have you noticed how the males and females choose different places in which to rest? Darters like these are difficult to catch on the wing as their flying skills are superb but they are vulnerable when they land. The brick red male has lined himself up with the dead pine needles whereas the greenish gold female has chosen a dangling posture against a backdrop of drooping green leaves, both of them opting for camouflage suitable to their colouration.

There’s a bit of a view of the rest of the valley over here. We may well reach those chunky, exciting looking mountains eventually. It all depends upon what we find to amuse us on our way. This valley is as new to me as it is to you so who knows? Until next week – happy hunting.

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LINKS:

Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog)

Cretan Flora

Flowers of Crete;

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Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium