Everbrown?

The forest around the Croft is full of Holm oak, Quercus ilex. Holm oak is evergreen and so our valley has always been a green place, even in the hottest summers. But this year - the second year of drought in Montseny - the trees have turned brown. 

The picture would look normal, in autumn in a deciduous forest. But here in the Holm oak forests of Catalonia it's a sign of death.

Thirsty trees

Groups of Holm oak have either died or gone into some form of drought hibernation. Around here these patches of brown seem to be associated with soil disturbance - a new path here, a drain dug there.

 

The die-back has been general, affecting all the plant life (and, we assume, some of the fauna too).

Pasture limits

In August, finally, it rained, and first the grasses and then the trees have been slurping up the water, and putting out new green shoots. 

And still governments take too little action on climate change. Shame on them.

Sex Bombus

Sex, for bees, is famously terminal, at least for the male. Rather like the spider that eats its mate, the male bumble bee (Bombus spp) will die after it mates with the queen.

Bombus sex is having your end away, in every sense of the phrase...

Double Bug

Two scenes of, er, bug intimacy this week.

The first is a pair of clegs (horse flies), Tabanidae. I have an admiration-hate relationship with clegs. Admiration for their extraordinary efficiency and accuracy - they can attack a horse's legs - or mine - fast and from a distance, but land with such precision that you feel nothing until the wee bu&&er has bitten a chunk out of you, at which they fly off, again at high speed but this time in a dodging, zigzag flight path that makes them impossible to swat. Hate, because they are a constant summer nuisance for the donkeys.

But the admiration part of the equation increased with this pair who managed to couple on an orange-tree leaf, and then fly off, still coupled in perfect coordination, when my camera got too close.

This is giving me a buzz

Clegs fight the stereotype; it is she that bites the donkeys, while he floats around our garden flowers eating only nectar.


And then there were these two. They were locked in a love scene at the entrance to a mouse burrow, like two sumo wrestlers. These two barely moved when I approached, and were clearly not going anywhere for anyone. 

It's boring but it works

Wet Spring

We have a beatiful wee spring here at the Croft. Opened up by the previous owners, it is marked on the Montseny map as running all year. For the last ten years - thanks to climate change here - the spring has been silent all summer.

But in the six months since December we have had 40% more rain than the average, the wettest spring since 2010. So the spring runs.

A Plum Job

Benbecula, the sheep who lived, likes plums. We have a plum tree in her field, so when I'm picking plums it's one for me and one for Benbecula, and one for me and one for Benbecula...

Another night

We had a cool cat stroll past the camera trap the other night. It's a Genet, Genetta genetta. Not really a cat, but very cat-like.

Look for the eyes, to the right

According to Wikipedia, the common genet was brought from the Maghreb to south west Europe as a domestic animal about 1000 to 1500 years ago. The genet is evidence of the phrase sometimes used here - 'Africa ends at the Pyrenees.'