Southern Spain (and Canary Islands) February/March 2023
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Finally I managed to bucket in some time, on its almost ever-flowing* way forward [*actually interesting, that there most probably was a "time" without time, but there always might be time in future? And what about black holes? aaaaah! Ah! Check out this great youtube channel: CoolWorlds].
Where was I? Ah, yes, time for a "new" blog post! In late February and (more) early march we were on honeymoon in southern Spain and the Canary Islands.
Why these destinations? Well, South Spain because of its amazing cultural heritage (I am really not that interested in architecture, but the stuff there... just impressive!) And the Canary Islands because of the endless possibilities for hiking and its nature.
In Spain we visited Granada, the Sierra Nevada, Sevilla, Cordoba and Ronda. Each place is special by its own! Granada has a beautiful old city centre and the amazing Alhambra, the Sierra Nevada is just fun to see, because it's so high above everything, Sevilla has the huge cathedral and is also a great place to see a flamenco show, in Cordoba you have the mosque-cathedral which is so incredibly huge that I'm at a loss for words and Ronda with its bridge over the canyon is a must see as well.
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Unfortunately, in the south of Spain I mainly used my iPhone, which produces crap pictures compared to my Nikon D700. So there are only a few to show here, those of Granada and the Alhambra.
The old town of Garanada is a really nice Mediterranean city, with lots of cute bars and cafés and gives you a nice place to stroll around if you have an Alhambra overload.
Below left is the view from the Palacio Dar al-Horra in Granada, looking north (I think). On the right is the view from the Alhambra to the Sierra Nevada.
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Among many other things, one of the main attractions of the Alhambra is the patterns on the walls, floors and ceilings. It's something you just have to see. And there are even loads of books on that topic. Books about the patterns, about the mathematics behind the patterns, about all those Arabic inscriptions, about the Alhambra in general and so on. In the official tourist shop inside the Alhambra you get all that books and lots of more interesting and nice thingies.
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With the sheer diversity of patterns, decorations and inscriptions you could fill easily more than 100 blogposts on only that topics. The Alhambra consists of thousands (!!) of square meters of buildings with such decorations.
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But -- what has been one of the actual highlights? Yeeesss, finding reptiles there. Namely Podarcis vaucheri (Südiberische Mauereidechse, Andalusian wall lizard). They are quite common in the Jardines del Generalife right next to the Alhambra.
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As said, i didn't use my DSLR much after that, unless, of course, there are atmospheric optical phenomena around! Like here a rainbow (or better fountain bow) in Sevilla at the Plaza de España. Btw., did you know that there are meanwhile picures of the 4th and 5th order rainbow??
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One thing you definitely should also do is visiting a Flamenco show in one of the small Flamenco places. We did so in La Milonga Tablao in Sevilla, and it was an absolutely amazing performance. We had three guys singing, dancing and playing the guitar, and what shall I say, it couldn't get more manly ;-)
So much in short about one week in South Spain. As said, Ronda and the mosque-cathedral in Cordoba are also highly recommended to see!
More to follow, als far as the second part of the trip, the Canary Islands, were a littlebit more in focus of my interests ;-)
PS: DeepL write suggests sooo many changes in the text. Well I'm too lazy for that now, and I can excuse myself for not being a native speaker :-P
Something to come soon!
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First of all -- I think I already found my favourite song of the year, or actually the last years -- The Jezabels with Stand and Deliver! Simply wow. Amazing. I just can't say it's the song of the decade, because I remember vaguely how amazed I was by some Tool and APC songs when I listened to them the first few times.
Anyway, that's not the main reason for this post. The main reason are 2574 pictures taken during a three-week holiday in the end of February and the beginning of March, of which I would like to post a small but fine selection here very soon!
And here's a little puzzle preview of one of the huuuuge herpetological highlights of the trip. Now it's your turn to guess which species it is, and by that you will already know one of the places we've been to :-)
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Carinthia 2022
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Woopwoopwoop -- it's the 10th anniversary of this gem of a blog 🥳 You may have wondered, why there hasn't been any update for about a year. Well, I unfortunately didn't have much time for excursions, so there are not much new pictures to see. But now -- finally -- I've been on a field trip again! 4 days in Carinthia in the region of Arnoldstein, together with Günther, who, very unusually, wasn't writing on a new book for the total four days [have a look at those great books about grasshoppers and reptiles & amphibians of Vienna!].
It was a very nice and relaxed fieldtrip, the only goal was to visit the Schütt region and photograph and watch whatever animal we stumble upon. In the end, of course, we also took the opportunity to visit Horvath's rock lizard (Iberolacerta horvathi, Kroatische Gebirgseidechse) and were very happy about every nose-horned viper (Vipera ammodytes, Hornotter bzw. Hornviper) we found. Also we were surprised by the numbers of Aesculapian snakes (Zamenis longissimus, Äskulapnatter). Besides finding lots of interesting animals (and flowers!) we also ran into two fellow "fieldherpers", who by coincidence stayed at the restaurant where we ate dinner every day, and with whom we also spent some nice time.
All pictures below were photographed "in-situ", meaning not disturbing or touching the animals, which I'm very happy about and is meanwhile one of the main boundary condition for such trips.
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On top and bottom left the viviparous lizard (Zootoca vivipara / Bergeidechse), which I really like because they are usually quite shy, and quickly disappear into the lowest vegetation layer when you make too much of a ruckus. Bottom right one of the highlights in Carinthia - Horvath's rock lizard (Iberolacerta horvathi / Kroatische Gebirgseidechse). You can find both species in the same habitat, but Horvath's rock lizard is sitting, fitting to the name, on the rocky and vertical structures.
From the southern small tributaries in the Gailtal, where we saw the upper species, we continued to our main target region, the Schütt rockslide fields close to Arnoldstein. Most common reptile species there is the common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis / Mauereidechse, bottom left), but, speaking of lizards, also the European green lizard (Lacerta viridis / Östliche Smaragdeidechse) is not rare. During mating season the male European green lizards cannot be overseen due to their shining blue throat (top left and -- not really a "puzzle picture" -- bottom right). The female European green lizards (top right) lack the blue throat and have a comparatively smaller head.
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Lizards -- check! But, of course, even though we said in the beginning, that we don't care what we see, we eventually also wanted to find some snakes. And we did! Actually we had some very exciting encounters with nose-horned vipers (Vipera ammodytes / Hornotter bzw. Hornviper), one of them was calmly sliding between us, literally between our feet. Another interesting and a little sad observation has been an Aesculapian snake that emptied a nest of Eurasian wrens (Troglodytes troglodytes, Zaunkönig). Actually Günther first noticed the continous alarm calls of the Eurasian wrens, and jokingly noticed "ah, surely an Aesculapian [snake] raiding their nest...". Coming closer it turned out to be true! Apart from that we found another Aesculapian basking completely exposed on the top of a huge pile of branches and about 4 nose-horned vipers. Two of them were actively crawling around, which was nice to watch.
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But not only herpeto-geeks will enjoy that region, also people with interest in other groups, like arthropods, will be very happy there! Those two spider species are quite common there: On the orchid (which should be Dactylorhiza fuchsii / common spotted orchid / Fuchs' Knabenkraut) one of the crab spider family (Thomisidae / Familie der Krabbenspinnen), and the others are males of the jumping spider Philaeus chrysops (Goldaugenspringspinne). I was also really glad to witness a combat between two Philaeus males -- they fight showing and using their fangs/chelicerae, but without biting each other (bottom left)! On another place, a male was guarding the nest of a female (bottom right, female is inside the web).
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Aaand, not to forget, there are sooo many interesting flowers there! We found about 7 or 8 orchid species -- just as by-catch without explicitly searching them. Bottom right the large-flowered butterfly orchid (Platanthera fornicata or Platanthera bifolia ssp. latiflora, I don't know what's the latest state of the nomenclature on that, Große Waldhyazinthe on German) and also the wild gladiolus (bottom left, Gladiolus illyricus, Illyrische Gladiole), the only place in Austria you can see it in nature!
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And finally, some random pictures of that nice field-trip: in-situ photographing is easy!, typical field trip styling, and eol of (both) soles -- currently being repaired!
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Ah yes, the random song reference! This time from the band of the woman [Konstrakta], who made this year's Serbia's amazing contribution to the European Song Contest: Zemlja gruva! - Nisam znala da sam ovo htela
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