Every day I take a walk in the campo with my dog Bonita. She is getting on a bit now and is getting slow but we both enjoy this leisurely stroll. And we both take an interest too in sights and sounds and smells. Bonita specialises in the smells and I do the sights. About a week ago while we were out on an early morning walk we witnessed something pretty interesting although, frankly, I don´t think the dog took too much notice. Continue reading
Category: Natural history
It looks like the gypsy barbel are getting close to their spawning time. The males have prominent tubercles on their snouts, rather like carp develop, and so can be easily told apart from the females. Two of the three fish I took yesterday afternoon were males. Continue reading
My A level Biology students get to use the word “fart” in exams which is something I feel they should be excited about. What other subject would let you get away with that? The farts in question are emitted from the rear ends of cows and are said to contain significant amounts of methane, an important greenhouse gas. Technically, the gas is much more abundant in cow burps but the word “burp” doesn´t quite have the same appeal. This methane is a by-product of the complex process of cellulose digestion and is actually produced by microorganisms residing in the cow´s intestines rather than the cow itself.
In Southern Andalucia we are spared the worst extremes of seasonal change. The cold does not hit us as hard as further north in Europe, and even Spain. But the changes of the seasons are evident from the passage of birds in the skies overhead as they make their way from Africa into Europe in the spring and summer and returning once again in the autumn.
There is one bird which is due to make an appearance soon and which, to me at least, signals the change of season as clearly as a leaf fall in the autumn. This is the bee eater… Continue reading
It rained heavily last night and the rain continued to fall as I headed out in the late morning to take a look at the river. The weather seems to have been dry for some time now and I was curious to see how the fish would respond to the rainfall. Perhaps the disturbance of the droplets on the surface of the shallow river might animate them a little or, at least, make it a little easier to approach them unseen. I figured one thing was certain, the rain was unlikely to make them any wetter than they already were! Continue reading
Vultures are in trouble. In India their numbers have crashed by some 75% and the cause of this appears to be drugs used to treat cattle but which prove lethal to the vultures which feed on their carcasses.
One of these, a drug called diclofenac, has been licensed to be manufactured and used in Spain. It is estimated that populations of vultures could crash if even one percent of the carcasses on which the vultures feed are contaminated with the drug.
Here´s an odd thing. A colleague at work, David Días, told me on Monday morning that he had caught a huge pike. When he told me how big it was I though he was just pulling my leg. He claimed that his fish weighed, wait for it…. 29 kilograms! Continue reading
If you have ever been to Gibraltar you won´t need me to remind you of what a quirky place it is. It prides itself as being a little bit of Britain, complete with bobbies on the beat, big red post boxes, BHS and Marks and Spencer on the main drag and plenty of pubs showing premiership football where you can sink a pint of London Pride. But then you look a little closer and you see people walking around in T shirts during a February afternoon and you hear the fusion of English and Spanish spoken by the locals. Look behind you and you will see, above the buildings, an enormous slab of Jurassic limestone piercing the blue sky. The air is full of the screeches of Mediterranean gulls and the northern coast of Morocco, a continent apart, is only separated from you by a slither of water. Continue reading
Last Thursday I organised a trip inland to visit a fish farm which grows both rainbow trout and, more interestingly, sturgeon from which they obtain caviar.
The caviar, not unexpectedly, does not come cheap. A kilo will set you back 2500 euros and a tiddly little 10g can costs 25 euros.
Caviar eating is a rich man´s game and I will leave the well heeled to get on with knocking back the stuff. I am far more interested in the sturgeon themselves. Continue reading
fishydreams 