Viperine Water Snake (Natrix maura)

Natrix Maura

We have a swimming pool gone wild filled with mirror carp and grass carp. The mirror carp have bred so we have hundreds of little ones too. This also attracts others things, things that can eat these little fish. There are snakes in these mountains but I think that before the fish were introduced the viperine water snakes were just passers through. But now they have a reason to stay.

For a while we identified two of them. One small, one large and both of them a light colour. Then a third has appeared a slightly dark, reddish one, the one in the picture. So there’s enough fish to feed all three of them, enough to keep them here and maybe even allow them to breed. Although the fish we have don’t look small enough for a baby snake to eat on so they may disappear as soon as they’ve hatched. Also it appears that no new spawnings have successfully occured since a few years ago (I suspect that the eggs and fish fry are eaten by the small mirror carp before they have a chance to develop), so though the pool can sustain adult snakes, I think young snakes may not find anything here for them for a while.

Wolves???

Iberic Wolf

Only 80 years ago there were still packs of wolves roaming these mountains. Kids in the village were told not to play past the boundaries of the church where wolves were often spotted. These stories are now told to the new generations at school that find it hard to believe because there are no wolves anymore having been killed off by human activity in the area, during a period of environmental ignorance.

In the 60s, one of the first pioneers in environmentalism in Spain, Felix Rodriguez de la Fuente, started a campaign against the killing of wolves in the whole country. In a rather superstitious Spain, the wolf was still then considered as a messenger of the devil and therefore killed everywhere it was spotted. Felix spent most of his life championing the wolves cause, becoming the first defender of Spanish wilderness, bringing environmental consciousness to countless Spanish citizens, and demystifying old superstitions about the wolves and giving them some room to recover in their original territories. Until now wolves have done well in the very north west of Spain with a population of around 2,000 individuals distributed in around 300 packs. Although there are still a lot of complaints from shepherds who see their sheep constantly threatened by hungry wolves, some people have developed new ways of protecting their flocks without endangering the wolves such as adding to their flocks young female donkeys, which will defend  until death, if necessary, the sheep that they think are their own. These courageous females are quite safe as the wolves are wisely afraid and run away after the first aggressive kick or bite.

In the last survey, packs of wolves have been spotted returning to the north east of the peninsula and thriving on the numerous wild boar. They still haven’t returned to our area but they aren’t too far away and if they can cross obstacles, eluding human populations, we may find that we share these mountains with a pack of wolves. A prospect that we find both exciting and daunting.

Pipistrellus pipistrellus

Common Bat

(Photo taken by Javier Perez)

The Pipistrelle bat has a lot of work to do in a night. Eating up to 3,000 tiny insects every night, these flying mammals, every year in warmer months,  are present in the land. They roost in some hidden place, like hollow trees, during the day and come out at dusk to feed. The swimming pool is one of their favorite places as it provides them all kinds of flying insects and also water which they get sweeping down and catching mouthfuls of it. The mothers gestate their babies from 40 to 80 days depending on the climatic conditions and at the end of spring they give birth to a baby or two that starts flying around the third week and starts to hunt around its 6^th week, which is around when their mothers wean them. In summer nights it’s a pleasure to sit by the swimming pool to watch them do their acrobatics.

Dragonflies

Dragonfly nymph

When looking at this picture, one almost couldn’t imagine how beautiful an animal this has become. Dragonflies are delighted with the amount of water there is in the land, and their breeding happens every year here, without any major difficulty. You can observe in one of the ponds near the house, the larvae that grow everyday bigger into a nymph and finally takes flight, leaving this carcass behind. Dragonflies then feed on mosquitoes, flies and other little insects that they catch while flying and eat in situ above the swimming pool. The presence of dragonflies, like any other large insect, are a good sign of balance in a place’s ecosystem. It means that there is enough food for it to hunt, survive and breed. At the same time they can also be prey for other creatures, sustaining other parts of the food chain.

Old Apple Orchard Cairn

Cairn and Terrace '05

Adam: Years ago I read a series of books all about a modern day man’s journey into another world using a large Cairn in Scotland as his portal. Since then I’ve wanted to build my own cairn.
On this land there are terraces built for hazel and apple trees. On a search around the land I found an old apple orchard, reminiscent of Celtic Apple isles of immortality. It was on this terrace that I decided to start my cairn, I took the largest rocks from around and built it. Since then everytime I visit it I take a stone along my walk and place it on my cairn. Visit by visit it grows larger.
My plans for this terrace is to gradually plant it up with trees and turn it into a forest. There are some very large pine trees around its edge, and younger ones growing on the terrace. There are also different oak trees, mainly Quercus ilex. There is also some large ash trees nearby, their branches reaching over the ground, where I’ve picked ash keys (seeds) and, later, planted them.
Now all of these little ash trees are growing in pots, but hopefully in the future I can take a few of them and plant them back in the Cairn Terrace. Along with ash trees, I want to plant other varieties too and encourage the trees that are already naturally growing there too. It could become a good place for deciduous broad-leafed trees to start spreading and hopefully changing the balance of this pine dominated valley.

The cairn may not lead to another world but the world around it is changing. I’ll publish more pictures in the future.

Birds

Cliffs above the valley

During spring season the presence of birds in the land is fairly obvious compared to other seasons. We’ve been doing bird watching since the month of March and keeping track of the types of bird that are around, which includes blue tits, great tits, blackbirds, blackcaps, song thrushes, goldcrests, green woodpeckers, wood pigeons, wrens, robins, goldfinches (of which a pair decided to nest in a cypress just nearby the house), and the usual eagles that inhabit the cliffs above our valley. This is a list of the birds that we’ve seen so far since March. Different type of birds visit our place throughout the year depending on the season, which we will try to record and publish here.

Roe Deer (Capreolus capreolus)

 

 

Roe Deer

A few years ago there were no roe deer in the Prades mountains, then they were reintroduced back to the area and have been doing very well. They are flourishing and apparently breeding well, giving birth around June.

A few times we’ve been lucky enough to spot them whilst on a drive through the Prades. Even better we’ve spotted them on our own land about three times. Once we were driving by our land and in clear view two roe deer (a mother and its young) were running away from our car amongst a terrace of hazel trees. Another time one was spotted running through another hazel terrace after being discovered by one of the dogs. Also there are new shoots growing from the hazel stands we cut in winter and some of the top buds are missing; a sign that hints at the presence of deer.

The most spectacular though was the encounter we had with one on the boundary of our land near the other side of our valley. Here on the border, hiding behind a pallet, we saw a male and got the amazing picture we have above. Once it knew we were there it ran off, barking like a dog, with tail held high in the air. Just as much, or even more so, a resident of these forests than us.

 

 

 

A whole forest in my pocket

 

Young Oak

“In 2005 I visited the Brocéliande forest and while I was walking between the mighty oaks and chestnut trees I started picking acorns and chestnuts and collected them in my pockets. This is a gardener’s habit that I have since a long time. I can’t seem to be able to go somewhere without picking seeds and planting them later in my nursery at home. When back to the hotel, I went to my mum’s room and I emptied on her bed my pockets, which just looked like overstuffed hamster cheek pouches and said: Look, a whole forest in my pocket!” -Mika-

 Four years later almost all the acorns and chestnuts that Mika picked that day have grown into beautiful mighty little oaks and chestnut trees. When you look at all the pots together it does look like a miniature forest! Over the next few years we will be planting them on our land to increase the amount of deciduous trees we have, that will create a miniature special habitat where the soil will be richer in humus  and not so acidic as it is now. At the beginning of their journey in the wild we will be helping them, then it will be up to them and the forces of nature as to what happens next.

 

Butterflies

Photo taken by Mika

 

It is not so known that butterflies are important bio-indicators of a habitat but it is possible by studying the amount of butterflies and the amount of butterflies species to understand the quality of a habitat. They are very sensitive to changes in the environment especially to contamination by pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals.

 

Photo by Mika

 

We have a few types of butterfly that breed successfully year after year on and around the land and we would like to encourage this by introducing native plants that will attract them so that they can lay their eggs and feed.