How to be a Naturalist – Anywhere

I have said before that one of the great things about studying nature is that you can do it anywhere at any time. For this past week I have been given the chance to prove my point as I have been incarcerated in Ierapetra General Hospital looking after my good lady wife who has been having rather a rough time of it recently. 

One of the lovely things about Greek hospitals is that many of them have balconies which attract nesting birds. On our balcony measures had been taken to deter nesting pigeons which inadvertently provided ideal sites for House Sparrows. Undeterred the pigeons squeezed onto the top of an air conditioning unit  which a goldfinch would have thought twice about and tried to construct a nest by dropping sticks down the back and waiting to see if they fell through or not. 

Meanwhile the palm trees and the monkey puzzle tree below us provided perches for greenfinch, great tit and blackbird whilst in the sky above swifts and swallows and lesser black backed gulls graced the air. And last night we even had a barn owl glide through. 

The evenings gave us the opportunity to study some of the crepuscular insects that seemed determined to share a bed with the patients which included little brown ants, little green bugs and the inevitable mosquitoes. Having said that, resident insects within the hospital itself were virtually nil. Those that came in through the balcony doors were easily persuaded to leave and gave us no trouble at night. 

But best of all were the bats that had found a roost in the central block and came out at dusk each evening. With the sparrows decimating the insect population to feed their young during the day and the bats scything through them at night it's no wonder that the poor things sought refuge in the wards. Not sure of the species (we have sixteen on Crete) but I think that it is one of the four Pipistrelles to be found on the island. 

A bit short and sweet this week for obvious reasons but normal service will be resumed as soon as possible and we'll be back on the Ferma trail.

The Extra Bit 

Cretan Beaches.com have a great little wildlife section on their website with a whole page dedicated to the bats of Crete: Cretan Beaches.com - Bats of Crete 

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LINKS: 

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

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) 

The Ultimate Jigsaw Puzzle

We'll make our way up from the beach via the steps by the Porto Belissario hotel and then take a stroll up a track that will take us to the north east corner of the village.  

Now you may think that I'm puffed already, half way up the stairs but honestly, I've only stopped to admire this dragonfly. As you may already know, dragonflies and damselflies form a common group called the Odonata and you can tell them apart by the way they hold their wings at rest. Folded above the body: damselfly. Held out away from the body: dragonfly. There are 19 species of dragonfly on Crete in three  families and this is one of the Skimmers from the largest family, the Libelluidae. Nature is the ultimate jigsaw puzzle and being able to recognise a dragonfly and the family it belongs to is very much a first step; like the initial sorting of the pieces. 

The next part of the puzzle is fitting a few pieces together and if we take a look at these Globe Thistles across the road here we can do just that. As you can see they are being pollinated by a Buff-tailed Bumblebee and two different types of beetle. Incidentally the black and yellow beetle is a Chlorophorus varius which hasn't been recorded on Crete before as far as I am aware. It is the inter-relationships between species that start to show us glimpses of the big picture. 

If we trundle on up this hill a bit we can see the same thing happening on this Thyme, being pollinated by a Mammoth Wasp and two species of butterfly. Which links very pathetically into time being the fourth dimension of this puzzle. The insects we are seeing are all adults. In their juvenile states they may interact with a whole different catalogue of plants and not by beneficially pollinating them but by feeding upon them. Every gardener knows the damage that the caterpillar of the Small White can do to his brassicas and peach growers may well have reason to dislike the larvae of  Chlorophorus varius. 

So far we have been fitting the pieces together very simply; an insect interacts with a plant for food which may either harm or benefit the plant. Here beside the track we have some Lassius niger ants visiting some Fennel, a plant in which they have no particular interest per se. The sap of the fennel is of interest to those Black Bean aphids however and as they gorge on it they excrete the ant attractant sugar melezitose. Conventional wisdom has it that the aphids attract the ants for defence. However a recent paper has shown that this strategy may come at a cost [1]. So our jigsaw puzzle not only changes with time but it is a puzzle of many layers. 

Here we are at the top of the hill and by fitting all the pieces together we can see the panorama on the box. Apart from that cactus being pollinated by our Buff-tailed Bumblebee which shouldn't be in the picture at all. It is a garden plant that is spreading into the wild and in all likelihood pushing out native plants. This may have a knock on effect for the insects that depend on those plants and the birds, mammals and reptiles that rely on those insects as a food source. Nature really is the ultimate jigsaw puzzle; not only is it incredibly complex with over a million pieces, it is multi layered and ever changing. No wonder that it's so addictive. 

The Extra Bit 

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.12217/abstract  

  

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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)