Crete Nature Almanack 2018 Autumn

Autumn is nearly upon us and the birds are already flying south from northern Europe and either staying or passing through Crete on their way to sub-Saharan Africa. Find any stretch of water and you are likely to see birds such as Ruddy Turnstones, Arenaria interpres (top left); Common Sandpipers, Actitis hypoleucos (top right); and possibly even a Spotted Redshank, Tringa erythropus (bottom right). Look out also for the first appearance of the Black Redstart, Phoenicurus ochruros (bottom left), which usually arrives down here on the south east coast somewhere between late October and the end of November.

The flowers will start to appear after the first autumnal rains which have been getting gradually later over the past five years; from September 16^th in 2013 to September 29^th in 2017. I have chosen just three of them, but can you spot the connection? The first one is the Autumn Buttercup, Ranunculus bullatus, which grows throughout the Mediterranean, including north Africa. The second is the Autumn Squill, Prospero autumnale, which although it can be found throughout southern Europe and the Middle East, for some reason can also be found in Great Britain according to Kew Garden's world checklist. The third one is Crocus laevigatus, which is endemic to Crete and is one of a number of crocuses sometimes known as the Autumn Crocus as, like the others, it flowers at this time of year.

The rains also bring forth the snails, of course, and the familiar Garden Snail, Cornu aspersum, starts to appear in considerable numbers in gardens and supermarkets across the island. Apart from being edible did you know that its yucky, slimy secretions are used in American skin creams? The second one is the Chocolate-band Snail, Eobania vermiculata, which also appears in gardens but not so often in supermarkets. They are edible but considered inferior to Garden Snails by the Greeks so we export them to France (mind you, that little nugget of information is 37 years old, so don't quote me on it). Finally, the Green Garden Snail, Cantareus apertus, which has a shell that can vary from creamy yellow, through olive green, to almost black but is easily recognisable if you pick it up. It will blow bubbles all over your hand which reeks of slightly off garlic and lasts for days. Incidentally Wikipedia notes that “In Crete this species is active for 3–4 months after the first rainfalls in October.” Rubbish; I've found them out and about at the end of March.

As the seasonal rivers and streams start to fill, listen out for the a capella amphibian assembly after dark. The frogs and toads become very vocal in the autumn. The main singers being the Green Toad, Bufotes viridis, (left) which I think is a very dull name for such a beautiful animal, the endemic Cretan Frog, Pelophylax cretensis (middle). This is a particularly vivid specimen, they are usually much duller, and the diminutive European Tree Frog, Hyla arborea, which, although small, certainly holds his own in the croaking stakes.

Autumn also sees the opening of the mushroom season and lets hope we have a better one than last year when they were very few and far between. In fact, the only ones I found were these Mica Caps, Coprinellus micaceus, a nice, edible mushroom but you have to get them in the pan within the hour and, given the other caveats (see Voila - Turkish Delight ) one wonders whether they're worth collecting at all. Hopefully, this year we'll find a few more species.

That's it for the almanack; next week sees the start of Steve's Sunday Strolls and for those of you who are on the island during the next fortnight here is where you can join me:

Sunday 23^rd September

11 am

Sisi

(see last week's post for details).

Sunday 30^th September

11 am

Ag. Charalampos, Lassithi Plateau

A gentle stroll around one corner of the Plathini-Lagkada Wildlife Refuge and a handy village taverna where we can chat about what we have seen afterwards.

The Extra Bit

A big thank you to all who have taken the time to investigate my book of short stories and an even bigger thank you to those of you who have actually bought a copy (Amazon Kindle £1.99 or currency equivalent).

Photographic Bit

Many of you have asked me what photographic equipment I use so for details of aperture settings, shutter speeds etc. my pictures will be on Flickr within a few days and that has all the geeky stuff.Pictures were edited with FastStone Image Viewer and combined with Microsoft Paint.

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LINKS:

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

Explore the region with the #CreteNature interactive Hiking and Nature Map

Cretan Flora

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

The Snail That Built A Mountain

Forgive me if I break into song as we commence our walk into this gully but it’s such a beautiful morning – Sweet painted lady, seems it’s always been the same, getting paid for being laid, guess that’s the name of the game - that’s better; nothing like a bit of Elton John to start the day. OK that was not a bit like Elton John. 

Painted Lady, Vanessa cardui  and Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta

The reason for this sudden burst of exuberance is the orange and brown butterflies that are accompanying us, Painted Ladies, which we saw a couple of weeks back pollinating the ivy (Life in the Uplands). The red and black butterflies that are also joining us are Red Admirals and the two are closely related. The Painted Lady is Vanessa cardui and the Red Admiral is Vanessa atalanta. I find it intriguing that one should be named after a lady of the night and the other after a high ranking naval officer, a sort of lepidopteran equivalent of the actress and the bishop I suppose.

Italian Vipers Bugloss, Echium italicum

Last week we were chatting about Iron and how it travels from the rocks to our blood but this week I want to have a little look at another chemical element, Calcium. Take this knee high plant down here for instance called Pale Bugloss which looks a bit like an artificial Christmas tree. If you look closely at the stiff hairs on the leaves and stem (a characteristic of the borage family to which it belongs) then you are looking at calcium in action, the element which gives life its hard bits. In our case that means bones and teeth and it gives plants the ability to stand erect.

Snails of the Helicidae family

Snails of course, such as these of the Helicidae family which I’ve assembled on this bit of limestone, use it for shell building. This is recycling in its purest form as limestone, which is primarily calcium carbonate (calcium + carbon + oxygen), is formed from the shells of marine molluscs. When the sea bed was lifted to form these mountains, about 26 million ago, the calcium in the sea shells formed these rocks and the land snails are now taking it back by rasping away at the algae on the rocks and munching the plants that grow on them to make their own shells. And so the elements go round. There are 94 naturally occurring elements in all and nature re-uses most, if not all, of them in continuous cycles.

Lichens

Come on, I’ve spotted a cave, or leastways a medium sized hole in the rocks, I suppose one could call it a cavelet. Let’s explore it. Ooh, lichens. Look at this doughnut shaped one up here. Lichens grow very slowly from the middle out. This one is so old that the original ancestor has died and we’re looking at the succeeding generations. And this one at the back here seems to be almost glowing green. Unlike plants, lichens have no waxy cuticles or pores that they can close to keep out unwanted substances so they are very useful for monitoring air pollution. If you take a piece of lichen, dissolve it in acid and analyse the resultant liquid you can determine the types and amounts of elements that shouldn’t be there. In 2015 for instance the discovery of heavy metals in the lichens of Washington State in the US was traced to a zinc and lead smelter across the border in Canada. ^[1]

Jumping Spider of the Salticidae family

Ever get the feeling that you are being watched? There’s a little jumping spider on that rock down there and I think that he’s got his eye on us, or to be more precise, at least six of his eight eyes on us. Why so many? Recent research has found that the front pair are for sharp, colour vision including ultra violet. The next pair, the anterior lateral eyes, are detailed motion sensors. If you cover only the main eyes the spider will back away from an approaching object but if you only cover the anterior lateral eyes it won’t. The other eyes are thought to be less detailed motion sensors giving the spider a wider field of awareness but research continues on that score.^[2]

This seems a nice place to stop and admire the scenery so we’ll continue on down the gully next week and see what else we can find.

The Extra Bit

It’s that time of year again when the oranges are ripening and it’s time to make some marmalade. When I mentioned this last year so many people asked me for a recipe that this year I’ve decided to publish a supplementary blog post complete with recipe card and a cut out label for your jars. So if you’d like to follow me to the kitchen I’ll show you a simple way to make delicious marmalade that keeps for a couple of years (if you haven’t eaten it all by then)…Steve's Simple Marmalade

^[1] Science News: Lichens are an early warning system for forest health

^[2] Live Science: Why Spiders Have Eight Eyes

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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)

How To Get Blood Out Of A Stone

Ok folks, our mission for today is to clamber down through these rocks and explore that gully down there. To make things more interesting our route is lined with plenty of spiky plants so our chances of getting to the bottom without being bloodied and bruised are remote to say the least. This lethal looking bush here for instance, which I can’t quite place, looks capable of causing serious injury. I see that it’s producing tiny red fruits and as we have our botanist friend Steve Lenton with us today (although he’s opted to take a more sedate route) we’ll collect a couple and pass them on to him for identification. After all, there’s no point in having a dog and barking yourself. Talking of which, you wouldn’t just like to put your hand in and grab a couple of berries would you? Thought not. Here goes then. Ouch, first blood to the flora.

Red rocks contain iron

That’s the difficult part over, all limbs etc. intact? Good. My arm really is bleeding quite profusely now and my hand will soon be as red as that rock down there. I’d ask you to keep an eye out for some woundwort but it only grows down by the coast. The fact that both my blood and this rock are red is no coincidence. The linking factor is iron. Blood contains haemoglobin which uses iron to bind with oxygen in order to carry it from the lungs to where it is needed. Similarly, that rock down there is composed primarily of iron oxides and the chemical bonds between iron and oxygen reflect red light. This is also why arterial blood which carries blood from the lungs and has more iron/oxygen bonds is redder than venous blood which carries blood back to the lungs for oxygen replenishment and thus has fewer bonds.

Plants take up iron from the soil

Now I don’t know about you but I don’t go around eating rocks for a pastime so the question is: how does the iron get from the rock to our blood? The answer of course lies in what we eat. Plants like spinach, as we all know from Popeye, are full of iron but in fact all green plants take up iron from the earth in order to photosynthesise. Which begs the question; if it’s all to do with iron why are plants green and not red? The answer is that although the main element in chlorophyll is magnesium, iron is used in its synthesis. Without iron the plant cannot make chlorophyll and the leaves become yellowish in a condition known as iron chlorosis.  So all the plants that we see around us here, from the cropped grasses to the trees, are busy taking up iron.

Herbivores take in iron from plants

The story doesn’t end there of course. All of the herbivorous animals that we eat, from this garden snail down here to that goat up there, (“Who me?” “Yes, you”) are busily devouring plant material and passing the iron along through the system.  Which is good news for us because with insufficient iron in our diet we can’t produce enough haemoglobin and we become anaemic. (The word itself means lack of haem, the iron molecule in haemoglobin).  The iron also gets passed along to us in the milk (the goat’s not the snail’s) and although the mineral content of goat’s milk and cow’s milk is fairly similar the body processes iron and the other minerals more efficiently from goat’s milk so it’s a useful addition to your diet.^[1]

Termites help take iron back to the soil

That just about wraps up our story of how to get blood out of a stone but having got it out, how do we put it back again? Everything that lives must die, whether it be a blood cell, a tree or one of these here termites that are aiding the process of decay. As we go through life, the trees, the termites and us, we excrete waste products and return iron to the soil along the way and then, at the end of our lives, back it all goes to be taken up again or, over geological time, to be compacted, subducted, churned about in the mantle, eventually to re-emerge on the surface as a red rock.

What goes around, comes around as they say. Talking of which, here’s Steve.

“Any idea on these berries which I’ve taken from one of these horrendously thorny bushes, at great risk to life and limb, not to mention septicaemia, for your collection?”

“I’ll have to examine the whole bush and leaves to determine the species but I'm fairly certain it’s a Rhamnus.”

Ah, that would be a Buckthorn in plain English. Not content with trying to stab me to death it’s probably injected toxic berry juice into my fingers. The things I do for botanical research. Oh well, if I’m not dead by next week we’ll continue on down and see if we can reach the village of Agios Ioannes. 

The Extra Bit

And now I think we’ve earned one of those beers that I spotted in the back box of Steve’s quad bike. A lovely warm November morning for a quiet drink on a mountainside in good company and you really can’t beat the scenery.

[1] Nutra: Goat milk prevents iron deficiency study

Meanwhile back at home the Hooded Crows have just started to congregate for their November conference. (see also Bramiana In Winter)

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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)

Into The Night

Venus - both the "Evening" and the "Morning" Star

One of the great things about winter in the northern hemisphere is that you can observe the creatures of the night in the evening and still get to bed at a reasonable hour so, as it’s relatively mild and the sun is going down, I thought we’d spend an evening on the terrace and let the wildlife come to us. We’ll take a couple of braziers up and cook some of the delicious local sausages to keep us fortified in case it gets chilly later and mull a drop of wine as well for the same reason. I see that the Evening Star is rising in the west to keep us company. A bit of a misnomer as it is not a star at all but the planet Venus. If we were to stay up all night we’d see it rise in the East in the morning when we’d call it by the equally incorrect name of the Morning Star.

Noctuid and two types of Geometer

The terrace lights have been on for a couple of hours now and I see that we’re already beginning to attract quite a few insects. Not surprisingly the majority of these are moths. I’ve found representatives of fourteen families of moths, mostly up here on the terrace, and that doesn’t include all these small fry that you see flitting about that are collectively known as the microlepidoptera. But if you are just starting out on moths then the two biggest families that you are going to come across are the noctuids (Noctuidae) and the geometers (Geometridae). The big hairy one on the left which usually holds its wings back over its body and overlapping each other is a  noctuid. The ones that hold their wings out sideways are geometers, the smaller one underneath (of which you see many) are known as pugs and are part of the Geometer subfamily Larentiinae. There are moths in other families which share similar characteristics (which I’m sure they do just to confuse us) but knowing your noctuids from your geometers is a very good place to begin when trying to identify moths.

Green Lacewing

Now here’s a little insect that you probably won’t see until Spring if you live further north but down here on the southern shores of Crete I see them all the year round. They are called Green Lacewings and they’re from a very small and ancient order of insects called the Neuroptera. They are fascinating little animals not leastly because the female attaches her eggs to the underside of plant leaves on slender stalks. When the larvae hatch they immediately moult then climb up the stalks to the leaf where they become voracious predators of small, soft bodied insects such as aphids, injecting them with digestive juices which dissolve them within minutes. After pupating they emerge as adults and sing to attract mates by vibrating their bodies. Each species has a different song so this fellow here which is probably the Southern European Green Lacewing, Chrysoperla mediterranea, hums a different tune to his more northerly counterpart the Common Green Lacewing Chrysoperla carnea.

Leslie the Prodigal Snail

How are those sausages coming along? Nearly done? Good, because I can hear Maria and her daughter coming up the stairs and I do believe they’re carrying great pots of mashed potato and baked beans. So let us sit down and sup and I’ll update you on our ongoing projects. Firstly, big news on the snail front: Leslie’s back. If you recall Leslie disappeared on the first night and was, so I thought, never to be seen again. But, lo and behold, there was Leslie, large as life on Friday morning, firmly adhered to the outside of the box from which it had started out eleven days ago and there, curled up alongside was Beverley who’d made the gargantuan effort of travelling the five centimetres over the lip of the box where it had been dozing all week. In fairness to Beverley we’ve had no rain this week and none of the other snails have moved much either. Vivian disappeared for a time last night but was back with Ashley and the two Marks when I checked on them this morning. So, Leslie and Ashley are wanderers and they’ve paired up with Vivian and Beverley who are stay-at-homes. Maybe it’s a bit too early to say that in the snail world “opposites attract” but an interesting start to the project nevertheless. Have you had anything similar with your own snail projects? What do you mean: you haven’t started yet? Shame on you – go out and grab a handful of snails tomorrow morning, You’ll have hours of fun.

Black Redstart in its nightly roost

And what of the Sparrows I hear you ask. To be honest I’ve seen very little of Alice, Beatrice and the boys over the past week. A quick nip to the table, grab some food and away and I haven’t seen any of them for the past two days. If you go down the stairs and look above the front door you’ll see a possible reason why. Roosting above the door there is a Black Redstart who comes and stays with us every winter. Now he’s a very territorial bird, a bit of a bully in fact. Although I’ve never seen him physically attack another bird he seems to make his presence felt by sitting on the telephone wire above the table, dropping down on to it (but not eating) and generally careering around the terrace. All of which seems to disturb the sparrows. Another example of his oafish behaviour is his choice of night roost. Between 2005 and 2009 that roost was occupied every winter by a Chiffchaff. Then in the winter of 2010/11 the Black Redstart appeared and began to roost on a nearby arch. Gradually they changed places. During the winter of 2011/12 only the Black Redstart came back to roost and the Chiffchaff hasn’t been back since (in fact I haven’t seen a Chiffchaff locally since February 2012). 

Bird seed - help or hindrance?

Despite the lack of sparrows the bird table has not been totally devoid of interest as I seem to be growing a number of small seedlings. I’ve no idea what these are as yet although the secondary leaves are reminiscent of Loquat leaves, a tree from South East Asia but widely grown in these parts. It does beg the question however: “What plants are we introducing to our local ecosystems with our kind-hearted bird feeding?” I realised I had absolutely no idea. I buy my seed from an open tub at the local pet shop but goodness knows where they come from. As we know, all of nature is interconnected; local birds feed on local seeds and insects that either come from, or are dependent upon, local plants. If we inadvertently introduce invasive plants via our bird feeders then we’ll be depleting the birds’ food supply rather than supplementing it. I shall take a tip from my parents and hang bags under the bird table. It takes a while for the birds to accept this but it catches a lot of scattered seeds (that can be reused), keeps the ground below the table clear of weeds and helps to reduce potential environmental damage.

On that note I think I’ll have another plate of sausage, mash and beans. Is there any of that mulled wine left? Until next week – happy hunting.

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LINKS:

Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog)

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)