Wolves and Wild Cats

The trap cameras have as ever been doing their stuff. The advent of rain has meant that springs are less attractive and thus there’s been a little less going past the cameras of late. It was very gratifying to see the two Wolves again after not receiving any news of them for almost two months. They are already getting their winter coats and look a sight better than the svelte summer version!

One of the cameras has, over the last year, had a small number of Wild Boar past it, but this suddenly turned into a flood for a couple of weeks. The catalyst, actually caught on camera, seems to have been when one of the boar scampered up the rock face dislodging all sorts of soil, rocks etc. There seems to have been something irresistible in this debris to the boar because for two weeks they couldn’t leave it alone! I’ve put several of the cameras on video mode recently so that I can play them to Zoe to see the animals – she of course visits the cameras often but doesn’t see the animals – so I’ve got only videos of these super-active boar! The other animal which has been showing itself to the cameras more of late is the Wild Cat. Several cameras have recorded them and in particular one got very nice images seen here. I also had a daytime sighting of a Wild Cat hunting waterbirds at Andriake. And the Caracal? No sign of the large adult over the last months but we did get a picture on one of the cameras of a youngster trotting along a dry riverbed, sadly a poor picture though so not included here.

Yesterday I went to Patara which was full of birds. It was also full of Tree Frogs, Hyla orientalis. They were singing constantly – lovely to hear such numbers. In the afternoon I was busy removing rocks around the base of an old Quercus aucheri tree to make some mini-terraces to plant in when Zoe and I discovered some slithery little reptiles in the soil. These lovely shiny little skinks were almost entirely without legs and slightly reminiscent of Slow Worm. They turned out to be Kardes’ Snake Skink endemic to the southernmost parts of Southwestern Turkey and the couple of Greek islands there-off. Note the amazing line of emerald spots in the tail!