The fauna of Corfu (Kerkyra) was undoubtedly brought into the spotlight on a major scale by the publication of Gerald Durrell’s Corfu Trilogy, beginning with My Family and Other Animals in 1956. In these books the island is portrayed as an idyllic, enchanting place, still untouched by industrialisation, and brimming with a colourful assemblage of insects, birds, snakes, toads, and more, the abundance of which is sadly becoming more and more difficult to imagine. The wit and charm with which Durrell portrays the peculiarities of animals and people alike has inspired several generations of naturalists, and makes Corfu a popular destination for tourists and wildlife-watchers.
Located off the far northwestern coast of Greece, approximately half of the island runs parallel to the Albanian coastline; it is situated also at the meeting of two seas, the Adriatic and Ionian. Corfu's habitats are varied, with fertle plains, lagoons, and mountains, experiencing the typical Mediterranean climate of hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters.
September is a rather out of peak season for many Mediterranean countries when it comes to spotting invertebrates and reptiles, particularly considering the hot weather of 2022 across the continent. I was keen to see, although not massively hopeful of finding, either of Corfu's two species of tortoise: the Hermann's (Testudo hermanni) or the Marginated (T. marginata), as I had never seen a wild tortoise before. I was also hoping to see Glass Lizards (Pseudopus apodus).
We stayed in the far north of the island, at Rebecca's Village just outside Sidari. The accommodation itself was very pleasant, with the option for all-inclusive food and set within nice habitat.
DAY 1: SIDARI
The first thing we did on our first day was take a late morning walk down to the beach, in order to get our bearings. It was already hot, and I knew that the best times of day to find things were in the morning and evening, but we were so curious and excited that it felt like a betrayal to wait. We wandered slowly down a small single-lane road fringed by tufty, wildflower-filled verges and flanked by small fields, in which there were many butterflies. The first ones we saw were some extremely large Meadow Browns, followed by a pea field full of blue butterflies, and a Swallowtail (Papilio sp.). Little skippers zoomed about the verges. A young Jay (Garrulus glandarius) sat on the edge of a ploughed field, allowing me to take its picture before flying off.
After crossing the main road, we wandered down a white sandy track, around which were a few houses with stone walls and deep ditches around. On the verges, the umbellifers, willowherbs and various other plants still had a few flowers out, which were being visited by a variety of insects. Most of these were wasps, including European Hornets / Σφήκα η ευρωπαϊκή (Vespa crabro) and Oriental Hornets (Vespa orientalis), but I also saw a scoliid wasp (later identified as the Six-spotted Scoliid Wasp, Colpa sexmaculata) and two species of blue butterfly: Long-tailed Blue (Lampides boeticus) and Holly Blue (Celastrina argiolus), conspicuous by its recognisability. In sheltered spots at the edge of the sandy track could be seen many small ant-lion pits, and dragonflies hawked across in front of us, chasing each other with rustling wings and fighting over the best sitting spots. Many of the closed umbellifer heads were inhabited by the splendid Striped Shieldbug (Graphosoma italicum) feeding on the unripe seeds, and on several occasions we also encountered the fantastic orange and black Eurydema spectabilis, both in flight and at rest.
As it was late in the morning, the only reptiles we saw on our walk were Dalmatian Algyroides / Σαύρα του Ιονίου (Algyroides nigropunctatus) and a very small green snake, which could have been an Eastern Montpellier Snake / Σαπίτης (Malpolon insignitus), but the quick glimpse of it slipping behind a wall was too brief to tell.
On a patch of waste ground near a car park, I was excited to spot from a distance a butterfly I thought I recognised – the purposeful, gliding flight, a flash of deep orange, black wingtips… Monarch! In my excitement, I neglected to question the distance of this particular butterfly from its Atlantic cousins, and it was only later on in the day when I found a checklist of Corfu’s butterflies (from a 2009 AES publication) that I discovered that what I had seen was in fact not a Monarch (Danaus plexippus), but a Plain Tiger / Πεταλούδα μονάρχης (D. chrysippus) instead. The individual dancing around the white sand and scrubby bushes behind the beach car park was the only one I saw.
On the walk back, one of the beautiful dragonflies which had been zipping about finally landed, revealing itself to be a male Violet Dropwing (Trithemis annulata).
Above: Argiope, Long-tailed Blue, Ant-lion pit, Violet Dropwing, Colpa sexmaculata
Graphosoma italicum
Eurydema spectabilis
Later that afternoon we visited Anthropograva cave, Klimatia, to see what could be found. We were hoping to see the endemic Corfu Cave Cricket (Dolichopoda steriotisi), which is found across the island. The cave was situated at the end of a short path from a parking spot on a bend in the road, and looked deceptively small from the outside. The entrance had been modified so people could enter, after which it was a scramble down a rocky slope and through another entrance to reach the other chambers. When we entered the cave mouth, looking up the rock slope to the left I immediately spotted two enormous spiders on the wall at the top, next to a very narrow opening into a side chamber. However, when I looked at them through my binoculars, I was delighted to see that they were not spiders (although I would have been happy to see spiders too, of course) but the very crickets we had been hoping to find. I clambered up the rock face slowly, so as not to disturb them, and found that in addition to these two there were tens of others inside the chamber, waving their long antennae and running from the light of my torch. They were significantly bigger than I’d imagined, with an approximately six or seven centimetre leg span, and there were a great number of them on the cave walls and especially in the narrow, flat side chambers.
In one of the lower chambers we saw a bat flying silently around, dark on top with a pale underside.
Dolichopoda steriotisi
After we had looked in the cave, we took a wander around the outside and then onwards up a trail, which was scrubby and fringed with olive trees. Under the rocks it was very dry, but there was still plenty of life to be seen: a little nest of termites under a piece of tile (which they seemed to be using as a roof), a fantastic green Chrysomelid beetle, and a nest of large, rather formidable ants of the genus Cataglyphis. They seemed highly carnivorous (and quite aggressive), as their midden-heap was composed almost entirely of insect remains, including those of other ants. When you approached them, they stood up tall on their legs and waved their jaws threateningly, leaving no doubt that they would use them with very little provocation. They reminded me a little of Wood Ants. Cataglyphis are known for their incredible navigational habits, finding their way home from foraging trips by using visual cues. This desert-adapted genus has a very effective internal compass, which accounts for changes in the pattern of the sun's movement, as well as a visual system which processes landscape-scale images (source).
I personally preferred the more placid and pleasant-natured Harvester Ants (Messor sp.) present in the same area, whose middens were composed of lots of little seeds and grass heads.
On the way back, we made several more stops to follow dusty little trails through olive groves and scrub. Underneath a piece of discarded carpet I found a fantastic little Neuropteran larva, the smallest one I had seen. On a wall were numerous bagworm larvae with cases made from dried grass stems. Flipping a rock, Tom found one of his dream woodlice: Armadillidium werneri, a fantastically-coloured species with an orange skirt and pale spots. I also found a very photographic Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus) and a Woodlouse Spider (Dysdera sp.).
Below: Chrysomelid beetle
Below: Common Blue
As we got closer to our hotel, we crossed a slightly dilapidated wooden bridge which stretched over a still (or very slow-moving) water body, blanketed in green duckweed. The banks were tree-covered, and scrub over steep slopes made it inaccessible for people. Several logs loomed out of the swampy water. On one of these I saw a very familiar shape, and we stopped the car, before backing up onto the bridge with the binoculars. It was indeed a turtle, and a European Pond Turtle / Στικτή νεροχελώνα (Emys orbicularis) no less! Thre were two, sitting on various logs, quite well-camouflaged with their black and gold spotty colouration against the dark logs speckled with duckweed. I had looked for these extensively elsewhere to no avail, and it was great to finally see them in a perfect-looking shady swamp.
Once it got dark, we rounded off the day by doing some torching along the road. The most conspicuous group of insects were definitely the crickets, with numerous individuals of the handsome green and gold Eupholidoptera seen wandering along. Among the leaf litter were the curious Land Winkles (Pomatias sp.), which were very active in the humidity. I was delighted to see them feeding, rasping at dead deciduous leaves. Some of the ants, such as small orange and black Pheidole, were busy dismantling creatures which had met their demise under the wheels of cars, up to and including huge centipedes (Scolopendra cingulata). The Messor had all come out of their holes and were milling about very slowly.
I rolled over a plank, underneath which was sat an unassuming little black dot which I discovered, on closer inspection, to be the nymph of an Odontoscelis sp. shieldbug. Sadly I never saw an adult (and they are difficult to identify even in their adult stage) but they are very cute, compact little bugs.
Above: Common Toad (Bufo bufo), Shieldbug (Odontoscelis sp.), Ants (Phiedole sp.) disassembling a roadkill centipede (S. cingulata), Bush Cricket (perhaps Rhacocleis germanica), House Gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus) and Loboptera decipiens consuming something dead.
Eupholidoptera sp.
I shone my torch across a field and returned a speck of light – invertebrate eyeshine. Approaching, I discovered it to be a large female Hogna radiata picking her way through the undergrowth, carrying an eggsac. I noticed afterwards when I was reviewing the photos that she seemed to have one cloudy eye - evidently not much of a hindrance, since she was a good size and had obviously succeeded in breeding.
DAY 2: MEGALI GRAVA CAVE
The following day, we visited Megali (Ano) Grava, an enormous limestone cavern near Loutses. Pulling up at the side of the winding road, the first thing we noticed was that there were a lot of loose stones to turn. Karstic landscapes, with lots of spaces and tunnels underneath rocks, are always fairly productive, and within minutes we had found centipedes, woodlice, and scorpions (Euscorpius sp.). The woods were primarily oak and olive, with a scattering of cyclamens thrusting their way through the leaf litter on the forest floor. From the very beginning of the short trail to the cave entrance we could hear a cacophony of Jackdaw calls echoing off the interior walls and around the outside cliff, and when we reached the cave mouth we saw that they were roosting (and probably nesting) in little holes and nooks above the entrance.
Euscorpius sp.
Inside the cave, there was a slippery dirt path, with the easiest route down signified by red blobs of paint and little signs. The bottom of the cave was wet, with fertile, soft earth no doubt added to by birds, bats and livestock over time. There were a lot of loose or shallowly-embedded rocks, and under these I found a great number of pseudoscorpions, several of which had egg sacs underneath – something I had never seen before. They seemed quite protective of these eggs and waved their claws about in a threatening manner. After breeding (which, like true scorpions, involves a courtship dance) the female pseudoscorpion will carry a silk eggsac on her underside for several weeks. After this hatches, and similar to true scorpions again, the babies will climb onto the mother’s back for a while until they are ready to leave. It would have been amazing to have seen either courtship, or baby pseudoscorpions clinging to a female’s back, but seeing females with eggs was still a lovely thing to witness.
On our way out of the cave and back along the trail, we saw another algyroides, and Tom also saw a whip snake and a Green Lizard / Τρανόσαυρα (Lacerta trilineata). Looking under some rocks in the dry scrub at the top of the valley produced a small lacebug (Tingidae) and an unexpected discovery: some huge millipedes, the Yellow-legged Pachyiulus (Pachyiulus flavipes). They were fascinating – I had kept the common African giant millipedes as a child, but this was my first time seeing some really big millipedes in the wild. Their gentle faces and soft legs seemed almost out of place considering how dry and harsh the environment was, yet the sun did not seem to bother them as they ambled about on the stones.
Grasshopper, Potter wasp (Delta sp.?), Tingidae, Pachyiulus flavipes
By the time we left it was approaching midday and the sun was glaring down, so our chances of seeing things which could be photographed had diminished. There were still a great many butterflies on the wing, including Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui), Clouded Yellow (Colias croceus) and Sage Skipper (Muschampia proto). At the moment we were about to leave my eye was drawn to a rock near where I had been sitting, on which had materialised a medium-sized mantis (Mantis religiosa), turning her head to stare at us.
After dinner, we originally decided to have a more relaxed evening, but the allure of the previous night's fauna became too great and we walked down the road using phone torches, with no other equipment. As is always the case when this happens, we saw a number of things which would have made for an excellent photo, but the phone would have to suffice. The first creature we came across was in the car park, a rather unfortunate looking huntsman spider which looked as if it had been chewed by one of the cats that loitered around the hotel. The fountain at the hotel's recepion entrance attracted a great number of creatures to their deaths and I had been fishing out sad, dead insects every morning, primarily hornets and moths. This evening, floating forlornly in the water was a dead mantis and a live hornet, the latter of which spent a few minutes cleaning herself on my sleeve.
I briefly returned to the apartment, placing the dead mantis on a piece of tissue and leaving it on the bedside table. When we returned later that night, I got into bed to find that it had made a miraculous recovery, standing up on the piece of tissue. It was released outside, where hopefully it will learn to avoid fountains from now on. I wondered whether the larger insects visiting the fountain had been drinking the moisture off the stone rim and had accidentally slipped in, or whether some could have been jumping in deliberately, hosting horsehair worms.
Outside the grounds of the hotel and down the road again, the geckos were out in force, presumably due to the combination of marginally cooler night temperatures and increased humidity. Tom spotted another snake, the Grass Snake Natrix natrix (persa?), which disappeared into a hole in a wall before I could see it, and we saw plenty of House Centipedes (Scutigera coleoptera). I spotted a huge and very regal-looking toad. We saw a few smaller toads, one of which was snacking on some ants which had formed a trail.
Finally, as we were exploring a small sandy track close to the entrance of the car park, we noticed an incredibly large White-faced Bush Cricket (Decticus albifrons) ovipositing in the sand on the track. This huge cricket is the preferred prey of the Greek Magician (Saga hellenica) (which is a species I unfortunately missed on this trip, but look forward to hopefully seeing in the future). I preferred the common name “White-faced Bush Cricket” to the alternative “Southern Wart-biter” for this beast, as I would be extremely hesitant to let something with jaws that big anywhere near me if it was in a biting mood!
As it transpires this was probably quite sensible thinking, as the jaws of this mostly predatory bush cricket are well-known to draw blood, and get a mention in Fabre's Book of Insects, along with some insights about their ovipositing habits:
“Instead of packing their eggs in casks of hardened foam, like the Locust and the Mantis, or laying them in a twig like the Cicada, Grasshoppers plant them like seeds in the earth. The mother Decticus has a tool at the end of her body with which she scrapes out a little hole in the soil. In this hole she lays a certain number of eggs, then loosens the dust round the side of the hole and rams it down with her tool, very much as we should pack the earth in a hole with a stick. In this way she covers up the well, and then sweeps and smooths the ground above it. She then goes for a little walk in the neighbourhood, by way of recreation. Soon she comes back to the place where she has already laid her eggs, and, very near to the original spot, which she recognizes quite well, begins the work afresh. If I watch her for an hour I see her go through this whole performance, including the short stroll in the neighbourhood, no less than five times”.
Scutigera coleoptera & Common Toad (Bufo bufo)
DAY 3: KASSIOPI
We visited several beaches near Kassiopi, the area of which is renowned in the cooler months for being a good herping spot, and hopefully a good bugging spot too. By mid-morning the temperatures were high and I very quickly became bored of the idea of sitting on the beach forever, and I decided to cool off by doing some rockpooling. There were several other people in the shallow sea too, looking at the fish.
At first glance, there seemed to be many empty shells on top of the rocks. So many perfect shells seemingly lying about for no reason (not having been washed away or snaffled by passers-by) soon made me suspicious, so I put some under the water, finding that my suspicions were confirmed – inside each one was a hermit crab. The shells mainly seemed to use Monodonta and perhaps Cerithium – it was quite difficult finding resources to identify the shells, but this resource (about Thásos, but there will be plenty of overlap with Corfu) was quite helpful. The crabs themselves were Mediterranean Intertidal Hermit Crabs (Clibanarius erythropus), found all the way up around Europe to the Channel Islands and some parts of southern England, but particularly common in Greece. I'm not sure which species of shell the one in the video is inhabiting, though.
I saw a cone shell, possibly the Mediterranean Cone (Conus ventricosus) which, like their tropical cousins, are also venomous. In a small, weed-fringed rock pool I found a marbled brown crab (Pachygrapsus marmoratus) and a beautiful, almost dragonesque Bearded Fireworm (Hermodice carunculata). The way it moved was hypnotic, undulating its body segments and almost walking on the bristles, as if in parody of a millipede or centipede. The species is aptly named, because all of the fluffy-looking bristles are hollow and filled with venom, which causes a burning sensation if the animal is handled. I watched it walking about for a while, eventually leaving it alone and returning to my spot on the sand to eat some figs.
DAY 4: OLD PERITHIA
On a very hot and humid morning we took a trip to Old Perithia in the north-east of the island, right next to Pantokrator. The village historically acted as a refuge for local people from coastal threats such as pirates, and is apparently the oldest permanently-inhabited settlement in Corfu, with records dating back to the 14th century (source). I was very hopeful for this site, not only because of its proximity to Pantokrator, but also the abundance of rocks and ruins to look around.
The village is overshadowed by Mount Pantokrator, the highest mountain on the island, at 906 metres tall. On this particular morning, it was misty and slightly cooler in the highlands compared with the stifling heat and humidity of the coast, with storms and rainfall rolling up through the hills and distant thunder rumbling further away.
On the way up to the village I spotted and photographed a fabulous Green Lizard from the car, which was sunning itself at the side of the road and was therefore quite tolerant of being watched.
The first invertebrates I found when rolling rocks around the village were a number of Mediterranean Red Bugs (Scantius aegyptius) both nymphs and adults. I mistook them for Firebugs (Pyrrhocoris apterus) at first, which are in the same family, but Scantius are slightly slimmer and less glabrous. I only ended up photographing the nymphs, which looked bright and sweet-like against the pale limestone, while the adults made a hasty retreat underneath the rocks. A small flat stone next to mine yielded a Convolvulus Hawkmoth (Agrius convolvuli) caterpillar sheltering from the elements.
I saw a lot of shieldbugs on that particular day, with plenty of new species to get to grips with. The first was found in the fountain outside our hotel, and was fairly easy to identify due to its distinctive shape and tiny size as the White-spotted Stink Bug (Eysarcoris ventralis) – related to the Woundwort Shieldbug (E. venustissimus), but with a far worse sounding common name. This one, along with two of the others, had to be collected and photographed in a tray with some leaves rather than in the wild, although they were all released afterwards. The photos I managed to get of them are by no means good, and it's obvious they've been photographed ex-situ, but they were for identification purposes only so I didn't mind too much.
Walking around Old Perithia, and then up behind it on the tracks leading out towards the mountain, the second new species of the day was Codophila varia, which I initially struggled a little bit with, primarily because many of the photos are of the red and yellow colour form - this paler form seems to be slightly less common.
I spotted it completely by accident, while watching a Mediterranean Scorpion (Mesobuthus gibbosus), a slightly unfriendly-looking scorpion (compared to the more familiar and friendly-looking Euscorpius… in my opinion!) which can be commonly found underneath rocks in dry, scrubby, grassy areas. Its sting is probably not fatal to a healthy adult, but is reputed to be extremely painful, so not getting stung was definitely at the top of my to-do list.
I then found a strange little black shieldbug underneath a sone by the side of the sandy track I was walking. I half-thought it may actually have been something else, maybe a beetle, so my half-hearted photos (to consult later) didn’t turn out incredibly well, but it transpired to be the shieldbug Macroscytus brunneus. A common but rather unassuming burrowing species in the Mediterranean, and widely distributed across three continents, it seems as though they occasionally have highly prolific years (as demonstrated in Linosa in 2017).
In addition to these, we saw a number of other interesting creatures, and some fascinating plants as well. Bright yellow flowers, which I believe to be the autumn-flowering Sternbergia lutea, sprouted with few to no leaves from cracks in the rocks, some on nearly vertical surfaces. Also growing among the rocks was the highly unusual-looking Biarum tenuifolium subsp. abbreviatum, a subspecies which is found in Corfu, mainland Greece, and the surrounding area. They seemed to hug the rock faces, growing in the cracks at the bottom, creeping over the surfaces.
The insect life under the rocks was clearly past its best for the year, as the piles of beetle remains caught up in webs and pits under refugia indicated. From an old spider's web I managed to pull out the outer exoskeleton of a huge Carabus with lovely textured elytra (perhaps C. coriaceus at an adventurous guess), as well as spot chafers, longhorn beetles (including a neat, stripy Cerambycid, maybe Dorcadion sp.) and other species among the piles of elytra and legs.
Under the same broken slab as the Carabus I found a few woodlice (Armadillidium cf. corcyraeum) and a fascinating little ground bug (Ischnopeza sp.) which camouflaged extremely well with the surrounding logs and substrate. Nearby, a fig tree which had dropped lots of overripe fruit was being visited by a large number of hornets, who were eating the rotting fruit off the ground and licking the juice off the gravel on the path. Most were so engrossed (or intoxicated) that they sat perfectly for photos. Near the car park, and probably less than 500 yards from the fig tree, I had heard the classic low hum of lots of wasps or hornets coming from within a dry-stone wall, quite feasibly the nest these hornets had come from.
Above: Armadillidium cf. corcyraeum, Vespa crabro and Ischnopeza sp.
There was also the odd Glow-Worm (Lampyris sp.) underneath the substrate.
On our slow meander back down to the parking area, I almost missed a Leafhopper Assassin Bug (Zelus renardii), which was sat very still on a leaf, doing its best to resemble part of a branch. This species is not native to the region, introduced to Europe from North and Central America in the early 2010s (2011 or 2012); despite their non-native status, they are not considered particularly harmful to the ecosystem. Able to adapt to a very wide range of habitats outside its native range, they catch and keep hold of prey using sticky secretions on their front legs, before the prey is digested and eaten.
As a last push to squeeze the most out of the location's invertebrate life for the day, I decided to check out a lonely fennel plant sat on its own in the car park. Umbellifers are worth checking out, as they often attract a high density of insect life, and this one was sporting a number of promising red shapes on its flower heads, which when I approached revealed a fantastic sight of a shield bug I had almost forgotten was native to the area – Graphosoma semipunctatum.
Several individuals of this spectacular and surprisingly large shield bug were sat alongside many G. italicum, as if positioning themselves for direct comparison. They were far more washed-out in colour, and the spots on their pronotums framed their narrow heads perfectly. With a bit of imagination, you can see a Clanger.
I also noticed (to equal amounts of excitement and horror) a large tachinid fly clad in grey, red and black hanging around the shield bugs, although I paid it little attention until I happened upon an unfortunate G. italicum with an egg stuck to it. Then I wished I’d taken a photo of the fly.
DAY 5: VARIOUS STOPS
The following day, we made a short stop (on our way to somewhere else) near a promising-looking short trail which led into a small clearing. It looked like an old farm entrance, with some big old olives overshadowing rough grassland and tall herbs, although somewhat dry and barren after a searing summer. While we were sweep-netting, we found, to everybody's surprise and delight, two Hermann’s Tortoises (Testudo hermannii). Tom found a baby one, and I found an adult shortly after. The youngster was perfect in every way, with a pristine shell and delicate, sharp claws. Being so close to a road and with a village only a couple of hundred yards away, this was a little bit worrying, but the adult tortoise had to have had the sense to stay away from the road in order to reach adult size – however, it was sporting what looked like old canine tooth marks in its shell, which can be seen in the photo below. I had been hoping to see tortoises on this holiday, and was not really expecting to by this point, so it was an extremely pleasant surprise!
Testudo hermannii
The shieldbugs from the clearing were varied but interesting, with the first individual a young Striped Shieldbug (G. italicum). These nymphs were very pretty, still a world away from their gaudy adult counterparts, with perfect camouflage in their muted colours against a background of dry plant matter.
The next lot to come out of the net were two Staria lunata (an adult and a nymph).
A small, extremely round nymph of an unknown species was also netted. I initially suspected it to be Eurygaster, but something about the massive head and matte texture of the body didn't look quite right. I took the matter to Twitter, where it was suggested that it could be an Odontotarsus nymph - not an avenue I would have otherwise considered!
Finally, the largest subjects of the day were several Carpocoris sp., which we only managed to sweep, never saw sitting out in the open. I believe the difficulty in getting hold of shieldbugs in the scrub was partially to do with the time of year and weather, or the fact we tried to pack a lot into this trip and therefore did not spend huge amounts of time in one place.
Carpocoris are taxonomically difficult, and can be hard to ID in the field if multiple species are present in the area. It's unclear whether these two were the same species or not (I suspect they were two different species), but they were certainly large and impressive. This lot had to be photographed in the apartment, and the subjects were being far from cooperative, so I was disappointed with the photos – but they do manage to show some of the features.
DAY 6: CORFU TOWN AND CAVE STOPS
We visited several caves looking for interesting creatures. One of the caves we visited was heavily used by bats, evidenced by an enormous pile of guano, with the culprits tucked up on the ceiling directly above. After a bit of poking about, one invisible bat tucked away in a crack decided that our presence was unwelcome, and shrieked and chittered angrily from the darkness if we wandered towards the inner wall of the cave. Since the group on the ceiling remained silent and seemed quite unbothered by us, we decided that the unseen bat was their sentinel or spokesbat; we opted not to disturb them any further, and retreated back outside.
That day was evidently the day of the mammals, as when we stopped for a break in a layby there were the remains of a dead Edible Dormouse (Glis glis) close by, probably a road strike victim. They were much larger than I expected, around the same size as a Garden Dormouse, although in the photo it looks much larger due to the plucked fur.
While walking around Corfu Town, a bit of an excursion from the northern part of the island, we found an unusual-looking grasshopper. I'd seen several of these during the course of the trip, but none as yet up close: the Long-headed Grasshopper (Acrida ungarica). This one was temporarily sheltering from the heat in a shop window where it was quite cool, but typically they are a heat-loving species typical of sandy and rocky areas, distributed across Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East.
The urban areas were frequented by several butterfly species, the most notable of which had to be the Geranium Bronze (Cacyreus marshalli) a species which has been spread throughout Europe from South Africa with its host plants (Pelargonium), which are often cultivated in parks, gardens, and planters. The colour on both the top and bottom of the wings really was shiny bronze, and they glittered and caught the light as they flew about fighting each other. I saw a few females ovipositing on a Pelagornium while eating a nice souvlaki at a beachside cafe in Sidari.
Above & Below: Cacyreus marshalli
On one of our final days, I found an interesting bug on one of the windowsills at our accommodation, the cryptically-coloured Centrocoris variegatus (Coreidae). There are two species of Centrocoris which are very similar to one another, and are distinguished by their antennal length. C. variegatus has marginally shorter antennae than C. spiniger, which I found quite a difficult characteristic to judge unless you have plenty of photos for comparison.
We made a return visit to the area where we had found the tortoises, and took a different trail nearby. I found a dead shieldbug underneath a rock, which transpired to be an adult Odontotarsus sp. - an extremely exciting-looking shieldbug, and I wish I'd taken some more photos from different angles! The checklist has 8 species of Odontotarsus listed, many of which do not seem to have many photos of them which are accessible.
We did a tiny bit of sweeping, and Tom turned up the fantastic little beetle Dicladispa testacea, usually called the Rockrose Prickly Leaf Beetle or sometimes the Hedgehog Beetle. Widespread in the Mediterranean, it was also recently discovered in the UK for the first time, feeding on Rockrose (Cistus).
The trail widened and split and we explored some way up both paths, which ran along the top of an approximately 20 foot high cliff, at the base of which was a flat-bottomed basin littered with rubbish, dumped over the top of the cliff to lie among natural scrub and stones. It was hot, still, and dry. Under the stones we found a number of the now-familiar M. gibbosus - they seemed to like the stony scrub, where there were plenty of ants and other prey under the rocks.
We also saw an adult Ant-lion, and later on in the day, a big fat larva climbing up a wall at night, about a foot off the ground – another mobile ant-lion larva which wasn't confined to a pit.
One of the most common butterflies we saw in this area was the Sage Skipper (Muschampia proto) flitting about amongst the herbs and scrub.
For the rest of the afternoon, we took a short walk and explore around Nymfes Waterfall. We were informed by some walkers who were coming back that the river itself had dried completely up, and there was no waterfall to be seen; we still thought that the bottom of the riverbed might be damp enough to host some life.
When we got to the end of the trail the waterfall had indeed dried up, although the dappled woodland in the valley was still relatively cool and pleasant. The smooth, worn river rocks were favoured by some of the largest Silver-washed Fritillaries (Argynnis paphia) I have ever seen, all immaculate. After chasing them ineffectually for a quarter of an hour, I gave up, thinking that their speed and flightiness would make taking their photo quite challenging. I sat on a rock to cool off, watching them taunt me by flying in closer and closer. However, the butterflies were curious and obviously had designs of their own on this new territory, and fought for the privilege of sitting on top of my shoe.
On our way back, a beautiful Jersey Tiger (Euplagia quadripunctaria) also made an appearance - these seem to have had a fairly good year in 2022.
I also saw a lovely mining bee, Megachilidae, although I don't know what species it is.
DAY 7: FINAL DAY FAUNA
On the last day, we headed into Ypsos to get something to eat, and in a nice cafe I discovered in the bathroom a large male Oak Eggar (Lasiocampa quercus). Just outside the toilet, I found a female, perhaps the object of his desire, and I released both of them on a grapevine outside. The female had already started to lay eggs on my hand.
When we pulled up outside our accommodation on the final night there was a large beetle sat on the kerb waiting for us, which looked as though it had fallen out of a nearby tree: the large Cerambycid Herophila tristis. These dusk-active beetles feed on a range of tree species, including Fig, Walnut, Mulberry, and Black Locust, and - like many longhorn beetles - take several years to mature. It was extremely nice to have finally seen at least one large beetle during the course of the holiday!
This trip was an excellent introduction to the fauna of Corfu, and despite the heatwave throughout Europe there was still plenty of wildlife to be seen. We found more than I was expecting, which is always nice, and it was fantastic experiencing in person the island so vividly described in My Family and Other Animals. The island is a bustling, multicoloured amalgamation of habitats and species, with huge promise in the more productive months. The best habitats for their diversity of species seemed to be the less pristine ones; the fringes and verges, wastelands, and tracks, where the proliferation of weeds, grasses and old rubble provides a haven for reptiles and invertebrates.
Invertebrate Highlights:
• Acrida ungarica
• Carpocoris sp.
• Centrocoris variegatus
• Codophila varia
• Decticus albifrons
• Dicladispa testacea
• Eupholidoptera sp.
• Eurydema spectabilis
• Eysarcoris ventralis
• Geranium Bronze (Cacyreus marshalli)
• Graphosoma semipunctatum • Herophila tristis
• Macroscytus brunneus
• Mesobuthus gibbosus
• Odontoscelis sp.
• Odontotarsus sp.
• Pachyiulus flavipes
• Sage Skipper (Muschampia proto) • Scantius aegyptius
• Staria lunata
Reptile and Amphibian Highlights:
• Balkan Grass Snake (Natrix natrix persa)
• European Pond Turtle (Emys orbicularis)
• Green Lizard (Lacerta trilineata)
• Hermann's Tortise (Testudo hermannii)
• House Gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus)