Crete: Amazing Arums, April 2011

Am I the only person who thinks the Araceae are great?? There's something very impressive about these bizarre flowers, and any day with a new Arum is a good day. Over the last couple of days we've found three, as well as the leaves of Arisarum vulgare, and there are more out there... I wonder how long it would take to see all of Europe's Araceae? Now there's a challenge...

Arum concinnum, a common plant of the shadier places around here, especially in the old olive groves around the village.

Arum creticum, on a dry hillside near Kissos

The arum to beat all arums! oh, except it's not actually an Arum... the utterly superb Dragon Arum Dracunculus vulgaris, (or 'that horrid plant', according to my travelling companions!) in full flower in the olive groves around the village. Worth the price of the flight just to find this!

*edit. How could I have failed to mention the smell (some might say stench!) of this plant... purported to smell like rotting flesh, I'm not so sure... but it definitely smells of something pretty bad! But for me, it's not a patch on the small of that lovely little Bisarum from Andalucia...

Crete: 17th April 2011

The weather was a bit more unsettled today: a fair bit of cloud, one or two showers and a good deal of sun too. Rather than strike out further afield, we spent the day ambling about quite close to where we're staying, visiting the monastery at Preveli in the morning, and then wandering down the lanes to Plakias in the afternoon.

The atmospheric grove of Cretan Palm Phoenix theophrasti down on the beach at Preveli, at the mouth of the fantastically named Megalopotamos River. The surrounding hillsides and the grove itself seem to have been burned through in the last few years, but the palms at least have survived well.

The rather handsome (if you like that kinda thing) Cretan Water Frog. These two had managed to get themselves stuck in a water tank near the village and were making quite a racket.

Yet more orchids... this seems to be Ophrys herae, just a single spike growing on the burned hillside at Preveli. Similar to the cretensis we saw yesterday, but larger, with more obvious 'shoulders' on the lip and a rusty brown 'throat'.

Serapias bergonii (probably), the commonest orchid we've come across so far, growing just about everywhere...

Crete: 16th April 2011

For the orchid-addicted, there can be few better places to find yourself than western Crete in mid April... which is where Philip is on holiday for a week!

Ophrys cretica. The star of the show, so far...

Ophrys cretensis
one of the mammose-sphegodes group, a very delicate little plant, much smaller than the Cypriot mammosa/alasiatica/morio. Told from the similar O. herae by the dark, not gingery 'throat'.

Ophrys episcopalis

Ophrys heldreichii, a big, showy scolopax-type

Anacamptis boryi

Orchis pauciflora

Orchis quadripunctata, a much deeper pink colour here than in Cyprus, where the majority (at least around the Akamas) seem to be a delicate white

just to prove there is more to life than orchids... fields full of the stunning red Tulipa doerfleri

Cyclamen creticum, yet another endemic

and it's not just the plants! We've already caught up with all three of Crete's lizards. Indeed, this one piece of wood was sheltering two of them: a large Balkan Green Lizard and a wonderful pair of Ocellated Skinks (including this chap, above), who certainly aren't hanging around to have their photos taken!

The Dark Peak, Derbyshire: 9th April 2011

A sunny Saturday was spent exploring the cloughs and moors of the Dark Peak in Derbyshire, on a beetle hunt...

The main target of the day was to try and find Violet Oil Beetle Meloe violaceus, as part of Buglife's Oil Beetle Hunt. And very successful the hunt was too, with three males found during the day, all of them bumbling about in the sunshine, in areas of thin acid grassland on the south-facing slopes of the clough.

As well as being pretty striking looking creatures, oil beetles have a remarkable life cycle. After mating, the females dig a nest tunnel, in which they lay up to 1000 eggs. The larvae hatch and climb up amongst nectar-rich flowers where they wait... until a passing solitary bee stops for a top up of nectar, at which point the oil beetle larvae jump aboard and hitch a ride back to the bee's nest! Here they grow up, chomping away on the bee's stores of pollen and nectar, as well as bee eggs. They overwinter in the poor bee's nests, before emerging next spring as an adult oil beetle, ready to bumble about the grassland again! Pretty cool...

The three we found were all males, as shown by the odd kink in the antennae.



Less glamorous perhaps, but no less interesting, we found four species of carrion beetle hanging around the bodies of a Red Grouse and a Mountain Hare, including the wonderful Red-breasted Carrion Beetle Oeceoptoma thoracicum (below).


With singing Ring Ouzel, Curlew and Golden Plover, several handsome Mountain Hares still in very white pelage and an amazing flight of 100 or more male Emperor Moths over the moorland on the hunt for the hidden, recently-emerged females, all in all it was a wonderful day on the moors...

Danube Delta: 5th April 2011

The last few days of Chris and Henry's jaunt on the Danube Delta. The birds continue to arrive, with Bearded Tits and Savi's Warbler already abounding in the reedbeds, booming Bitterns and hundreds of Avocets and Black-tailed Godwits at Sacalin.

Danube Delta: March/April 2011

Chris and Henry are currently in Romania, spending a few days on the Danube Delta in the company of George and Calin from Delta Travel.

While they've been having a great time with the birds (not to mention the great food that is always a feature of our time with Delta Travel!), the real 'now I'm jealous' moment came with a young Raccoon Dog who spent fifteen minutes watching the watchers watching him at just a few metres range. Wow...

Migration season is well underway. White Pelicans are just arriving from their wintering groups in the northern Nile (from one of the world's great deltas to another!), together with a handful of Dalmatian Pelicans.

Ferruginous Duck, Garganey, Ruff and Black-tailed Godwit are all arriving in good numbers. The wet woodlands are home to drumming Grey-headed Woodpecker, while large flocks of Glossy Ibis can be found in the meadows. An exciting time to be in the Delta... and migration has only just begun!

We have a full trip visiting the Delta in May, towards the end of the spring migration period, but there are plenty of spaces for our autumn visit, when the birds are moving more leisurely southwards. Contact us for details or to book a place!

Portugal: the Alentejo Plains, 29th & 30th March 2011

A couple of pretty spectacular days out on the plains and rolling hills of the Baixo Alentejo, between Mertola, Beja and Castro Verde.

All gripes about the pre-dawn start went out of the window with the views of the rising sun over the plains and the impressive total of 161 Great Bustards in a single 180 degrees view... The males were mostly in full display mode, their big white meringues spotting the hillsides with groups (or should that be droves) of females clustered around, sizing them up.

Much harder to come by were Little Bustards: each day we eventually found a handful of males, with at least one starting his leaping/flapping display and their delicate raspberry calls audible much more than the birds themselves were visible.

Elsewhere, the birds came thick and fast: five Black-bellied Sandgrouse, including a pair scoped on the floor; a pair of Great Spotted Cuckoos, another bird much more often heard than seen; three Black Vultures (a pair of adults and a juvenile) circling low over head, sizing us up for a quick snack; the wonderful antics of Lesser Kestrels at one of the largest remaining colonies in Portugal; a swarming flock of a couple of thousand Spanish Sparrows covering the road in front of us; Black-winged Kite, Bonelli's Eagle, Spanish Imperial Eagle... the list goes on!

But really, the highlight was simply the experience itself, two full days spent in such a wonderful, wildlife-rich part of the world.

(Photos from last year's day on the plains are here.)