Things are starting to happen!

So, we've been here for almost 3 weeks now, so I should probably update this.

Having arrived in Hania 2 weeks earlier than last year, things were a little less hectic this time.

We got camp up pretty quickly, a new bamboo roof was made over a few days, and last years emergency waterproofing makes an excellent mulberry protection sheet. It's also very cool underneath it, if a little dark. I call it the cave.

We've been doing morning survey since the 20th of May, and although we got our first nest on the 29th (which was on the Kolimbari beach), the first tracks on our main beach, HL, appeared this morning. Along with 3 sets of tracks on PR - which we cannot monitor every day because we can't afford the bus tickets!

The HL tracks went up to a set of sunbeds, and although she moved them slightly, they caused enough of a problem to stop her getting any further. A similar story on PR! This is frustrating, if they were stacked at night, our nest count could be up to 3 now!

Ah well, maybe tomorrow!

I'll update you all soon!

John

Location:Hania, Crete

Leader's Seminar

Today is the last day of the Leader's Seminar in Athens. Whilst most of us don't need much training, it's been nice to meet the people from the other projects and find out the different issues they face.

We've also had presentations by some of the founders of ARCHELON, which have been interesting to find out a bit more detail on the history of the society and also a few new things about Caretta caretta.

Tomorrow is the big move day. The 5 of us on Crete will be going over to the island on the ferry. Ive somehow managed to avoid te ferry so far, so not sure what to expect.

Anyway. Time to get up and get to the rescue centre. Speak soon!

Location:Athens

Here we go again!

Right, so a new season is due to start in Greece.

Let's see if I can keep this updated this year past mid-july, I missed out allsorts last year, but it just got too busy! We ended up with around 43 nests on the beaches of Hania (including ones found ont he beaches that we didn't fully protect), with thousands of hatchlings safely making it to the sea.

On the 9th of May I will be flying out to Athens to attend the leaders training for a few days before heading straight to Hania to setup the project.

The good news is it looks like we will be monitoring most of the beaches in Hania this year, so should be able to protect more nests! There will also be 2 leaders, so we should be able to get more work done.

Well, that's it for now!

John

A bit of an update!

This is probably long overdue, but things are pretty busy at the moment. After 2 months with mostly around 6 or 7 volunteers, we suddenly have 10, and 6 more arriving in the next week (including 2 from Leeds Met!). This might sound like a good thing (and it is!) but they all need training, and writing the rota is a nightmare.

So on to the turtles...

Today we found our 19th nest, which unfortunately needed to be relocated. This can normally be done very quickly, but I had 2 new Greek volunteers with me which meant answering lots of questions! A good morning for training though! That nest, and a couple more tracks with swims and body pits meant they have now seen more turtle stuff than some of the other more "experienced" volunteers (one poor Danish girl hasn't yet even seen a nest yet!).

I'm very happy with the number of nests we have so far, at the beginning of the season I'd have been happy with 15, and didn't really hope for anywhere near 20. Now it seems we should easily make that target, and perhaps, with unmarked nests, we might get up to around 25. Last year there were only 11 on this stretch of beach.

We also put out the first lot of nest shades out this morning, our first nest, which seems like it was laid years ago, is due to hatch in around 5-10 days, hopefully before my visit to England.

This all meant that morning survey, which has been taking 1.5-2 hours, took 5 hours today! I'd promised I would go help Mel out on the first kiosk shift straight after MS, but now I will only make the last hour! What was worse though, is that the supermarket only had sugar free Milko. Disaster!

Myrtles Morning Survey

Hi All,

It's been a while, but I thought I'd share a few photos from a morning survey last week, I was walking the beach by myself, so thought I'd get a few snaps in too!
It was quite a busy morning, within 500m of starting the beach I found this:

It's an abandoned egg chamber. The chamber had lots of rocks in it, so I assume the female turtle decided that it was unsuitable - she then went back into the sea.

Not much happened for the next kilometre or so, but then I found this!


It is a pretty much perfect nest, with a distinct camoflage pit and camoflage. A short dig was all that was needed to find the eggs


The only problem however was it was far too close to the sea. If we have northerly winds here the sea can come very far up the beach, and this nest would be washed away. So I had to relocate the nest (with a little help...)

20 minutes later, and the 123 eggs were safely positioned further away from the sea.


Things are slowing down a bit turtle wise, we have been stuck on 14 nests for about a week now!

I'll try to write more soon!

John

Things that go BOING! in the night!

The cicadas have started calling. The fact that they haven't been has seemed very strange. They were one of the first things I remember hearing last year.

Not that there hasn't been plenty of wildlife here. If you sit, watch and listen for the half an hour around dusk (like I am doing now!) you can see and hear all sorts. The smaller birds, mainly warblers and tits soon stop calling and find their roosts for the night. Then the Red-footed Falcons arrive and you see their amazing aereal acrobatics whilst they feast on the many flying insects. They catch and eat the bugs in-flight whilst swooping and gliding over and between the bamboo and mulberry trees.

As the light fades they are replaced by several bats, which I think roost in the mulberry trees. The insects don't stand a chance! Once the light really goes you can often hear bull frogs shouting, although this is happening less now. You can also occasionally hear what I beleive to be a Scops Owl calling, i'd love to go find it, but don't really stand a chance, their call can be heard for miles!

That's also when the creatures in the bamboo start to make themselves known (based on the evidence from Tasmania, a certain BIG Northerner would completely brick it! ;)) I'm not even sure what they are, they are possibly rats, all I know is they make a racket, and when they decide to fight in the trees they like to use my tent as some kind of trampoline... It's not a nice way to be woken up at 3am!

On a side note, things with the turtles are going well, we have 8 nests in Xania now, on our 5km stretch of beach. Last year they only had 5 nests at this point, on 14.5km of beach, and none on the bit we are monitoring!

I'm off now cos the mosquitoes have come out and are starting to eat me alive!

That bloody cicada is still calling!!

Xania

I've been in Xania (Or Chania or Hania or any other of the dozens of ways of spelling it) for almost 2 weeks now, I have no idea where the time has gone.

We are starting to get nests now too - after a week without anything, we've had our 2nd and 3rd nests within 2 days, the last one was found this morning whilst I was doing some nest relocations in Rethymno (it's my day off, what else would I do??).

Our camp is very nice, much nicer than the Reth camp, there is no electricity, but it's good to have somewhere that is just your own. The beach is nice too, but it's long. Morning Survey is a 5km beach walk, with a 5km walk back to the camp too! The Xania kiosk is in a great spot too - look at this view!


There are quite a lot of birds around in the Xania campsite too, we have a family of Red-footed Falcons visit us every evening to feast on the flying bugs. We also have lots of small warblers - one of which flew inside a hot car and got itself a bit dehydrated. The poor thing looked like it was on it's last legs - lots of water and half an hour in the shade and it was back full of life and shouting for it's mum!


That's it for now, I've got a few bits & pieces to do before heading back over to Xania.

Cya!

John