We saw plenty of fascinating wildlife on our Greek trip, but animals are rather trickier to photograph than flowers. The criterion for being photographed was simple – the creature simply had to sit still long enough for us to get the camera out & focus! Many interesting creatures aren’t included here for that reason: the many scarce swallowtail butterflies we saw (or indeed, any butterflies – infuriatingly mobile critters), the black squirrel we spotted in the oak woods near Meteora (the only live wild mammal we saw, in fact), or the courting great spotted grebes at Prespa. In chronological order, we have:
- Middle spotted woodpecker, Meteora. This was very obliging. We’d heard it tapping away inside a tree truck on the way up (stopping and watching till it poked its head out & flew off), so were on the lookout on the way back. It was calmly perched on the same trunk next to the path and stayed still long enough to enable us to take some quite good photos.
- Lizards, Prespa
- Dalmatian pelicans, Kastoria. I took loads of photos of pelicans trying (unsuccessfully) to get a really good one. I like the ripples on this.
- Pygmy cormorant, Kastoria
- Tiny frog, Vikos Gorge (not its official name!)
- Balkan whip snake, Vikos gorge. This was sunbathing on the path and I nearly trod on it. It moved away smartly but then stayed by the side of the path for ages.
- cricket, Corfu
- Blue rock thrush, Delphi
- Marginated tortoise, Athens (very close to the Acropolis, in fact). We’d expected to see tortoises in Greece, but hadn’t until this day – and the centre of Athens is the last place we’d have thought to see one. It didn’t stand still politely, so this is a slowish motion action shot.
And finally, not really counting as wildlife, here are some very relaxed stray dogs at both Olympia and the Acropolis. We saw stray dogs everywhere in Greece, usually fast asleep. But they’re very friendly when awake.
