INSECTS

Pleasant and less pleasant wildlife. Up there lost somewhere on the flanks of Oiti, on the banks of a lovely little river and camped in a meadow full of grass for George, I saw lots of skinks. These are almost legless lizards… don`t mean almost drunk, but almost without legs..the ones in Greece, that is.. there are skinks elsewhere which grow to a large size and have legs that work like legs, but the greek ones are tiny. They move like quicksilver. The adults tend to be a dark brown colour, and when they move they move like molten bronze. Younger ones can be yellowish, and they move like molten gold. They are very hard to photograph because they are so small and so fast and because they hide in leaf litter or grass and you can`t see much of them. I don`t want to disturb creatures in order to photograph them, or to stress them. I NEVER catch them and then photograph them. Some people who photograph reptiles catch them, then put them in the fridge for a while.. this makes them torpid and easy to pose. But I don`t like to even touch them because I am afraid to upset them, so, my photo of the skink just gives you an idea of what they are like. You can`t really see the vestigial legs, though you can imagine them…you can also look them up on the internet or in books and see a better photo. From being lost we became not lost after seeing a sign. We chose to go to Pirgos. From there we went down to the river and followed a truly lovely plane forest along the course of the river and at some stage that`s where we stopped in a very pretty meadow for the night. Just before we stopped I saw a dead Dahl`s Whipsnake on the track and photographed it. I intended to come back and photgraph it again in the morning when the light was better. Of course it was gone. Stupid Penny forgot about all the carrion eaters that come out at night. A hedgehog could want nothing more than to crunch up a slightly putrid snake. So, not only is there an inadequate photo of a skink, but of a Dahls whipsnake too. The insects were APPALLING!!!! In the evening we were eaten alive by mosquitoes, though our lotions and potions did their best. I can report that my tent`s mosquito net also kept those ghastly ksnipers (midges) off me too. Worse was to come. In the morning the flies. Sorry no vdeo dunno why I have, I hope, included a video of poor George trying to eat his breakfast while being tortured by flies. This was after he had been thoroughly coated with an insect repellent that he isn`t allergic to. I too was tormented to a similar standard. I wanted to just pack up and go, but our stuff was soaking wet from dew, and if you pack up wet you`ll be sorry later. So I decided I`d better follow my usual programme of pottering about looking at nature. And I was rewarded by getting photos of remarkable little insects that I had been seeing for several days and wondering what they were. I still don`t know what they are, natch, but I will use the rather good, though I say it myself, photos I have taken to do so as soon as I get home. Til now I had only seen them flying, which they do pretty fast, and then disappearing: brown bodies and white flashing bums and back wings whizzing up as you pass, and then whizzing off to where you can`t see them. But because it was early morning and they were damp and cold they just were perched on grass stems drying out. I still don`t know what they are, but at least their full weirdness is exposed to public view. (See the photo of weird but adorable black and white insect) They were my compensation for the disappeared Dahl`s Whipsnake and my reward for not packing up damp. I had thought of packing up anyway, because of George, but when flies are in this kind of mood there`s no escape. They followed us all day. There was a storm coming, that`s why. Something about the air pressure and the damp in the air and the heat makes flies really unbearable before bad weather. But it does give you early warning to take cover. We got to Dilofo. A wind got up so there was some relief from flies. Welcome to "Grafiko" Dilofo said the sign. Hmm. It was a very small place, where we met a person from Afghanistan and his employer. She begged us to stay and eat or take a coffee, but there was nowhere for George to graze, though we really did need to stop. When she asked where I was going I said over the mountain- a very fine mountain called Ghoulinas- to Ano Kallithea. "Don`t go there! They`ll steal everything you have!!!" "I`ll tell them what you think of them" I said. The Afghani guy guffawed, But then he said- strangely I thought: "There`s a camp with thousands of Afghanis there! "You have to watch yourself" Of course I became all the more determined to go to Ano Kallithea. But before we did that we stopped in a lovely place for George to graze. There was also a water trough – unpolluted with lime (locals have recently got into the very stupid and bad habit of dropping lime into water troughs. From what I understand of their reasons they are two: To "clean" the trough of all aquatic life..why? what`s wrong with tadpoles? To add calcium to the diet of their flocks and herds. (Why? Grazing, especially on lime rich soils, which most of the grazing grounds in Greece are, is a natural way to create strong bones and to produce plenty of milk without weakening the female animal that is lactating. Also, lime, as dropped into the water troughs is not in a form that the animals can absorb, anyway. So the whole thing is useless, and VERY destructive of the animal life that depends on these reservoirs. To my very great joy this trough had Alpine Newts in it. The poor photo shows a male (dark blue in this case, but can be anything from tasteful blue grey to Barbie turquoise) and a female, always sludge coloured like this. These need cold water. The larvae need oxygen rich water, and so don`t survive in the warmer less oxygenated water lower down, where they are replaced by common or smooth newts. The trough dripped into a little marsh, and here a great big tortoise was just lying in the water. On Nature programmes one sees the giant Galapagos tortoises doing exactly the same thing. I often see all three of the Greek tortoises enjoying water in this way: drinking and bathing. Now that so many troughs get used to clean cars, or are dried up or have had their PH changed by the addition of lime many tortoises are deprived of the opportunity to indulge in this behaviour. Tortoises make quite long trips to reach water in order to do this. People who are trying to find ways to make animal farming kinder to animals judge how much an activity means to an animal by how hard it is prepared to work to get it. The things the creature will really make a great effort to get are the things that mean most to its comfort and pleasure- and therefore health and through that its economic viability. By these criteria tortoises really need to wallow. Because they will really go a very long way to do so. Recent surveys of Greek tortoises have shown that their populations are secure ONLY if their environment stays as it is. Just by changing the way water troughs operate we are therefore depriving ourselves of tortoises. For no reason. Or only for reasons that farmers perceive to be good, but which actually are no good at all. Who told them to put lime? Where did they get that idea from? Of course the persistant use of watertroughs to fill up those tanks of poison you put on the back of tractors and then go to spray your fields means death to every organism in the area of the trough.. just a drop spilled here or there, an empty bottle chucked in the ditch and you can forget wildlife in the area. That's why this trough was so lovely. It was a haven for wildlife as well as being necessary for the sheep and cows (and horse and human) in the area.