So now the weather is improving, I am making a concerted effort to photograph the wildlife of Kefalonia. With lockdown restrictions, I am only allowed within a 2km radius of our village, but Simone found a small copse overlooking the next valley and I have visited it for a few hours every morning before sunrise. I can see down the valley to the lakes and most mornings a mist rolls over the landscape obscuring and revealing the valley in stages. I found myself a little spot behind an old olive tree. The copse is an abandoned olive grove which is overgrown with thorny bushes and wild sage.
When I told my eldest daughter, I spend a few hours every morning stood behind a tree in camouflaged clothing waiting with my camera she laughed, strange girl. Anyway, the first few days nothing much happened. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I saw a few common birds, but I spent much of my time watching the mist and daydreaming of warmer days. I am wearing several layers of clothing, including a thermal base layer and camouflaged balaclava and I am still cold. So much so that my nipples hurt, I am assuming that is the cold!
One morning I am stood behind my tree, camera poised, when a slight movement catches my eye. A very small mouse, almost shrew size, had shot across the path that runs along the top of the low wall. I waited a while, watching closely and then it shot back across the path and over the edge of the wall. The olive grove is terraced or stepped, as most are, to maximise the growth on the hillsides. This grove has 3 terraces, each having a drystone wall to retain the soil. My tree is on the bottom terrace with the drystone wall standing on the scrubland that leads down the valley. The mouse did not return, but I had seen my first Kefalonian wild mammal.
The mouse was so fast, I knew I would struggle to photograph it, so the next morning I arrived even earlier and scattered the corner of my cereal snack bar where I had seen it. I then retreated behind my tree and waited, and waited, and waited. Nothing, and nothing again the next day. I began to begrudge the mouse the corner of my snack bar. The third day as I was waiting and watching a pair of Sardinian warblers in a thorn bush, I saw another mouse. This mouse was coming down across the terrace from the other trees and was a different species. This mouse was larger, lighter in colour and as well as scampering, it hopped like a kangaroo. I watched it for 5 minutes as it ran between clumps of thorny bushes before disappearing into the thickets.
Once home, I researched Greek rodents and found there are 3 mice found on Kefalonia. The house mouse, the wood mouse and the yellow-necked mouse. The wood mouse is small so I assume that was my first mouse and the second mouse would be the yellow-necked mouse. Over the next few weeks and several snack bars, the mice occasionally stopped to nibble and gave me a few shots. Both mice are nocturnal, and I get about half an hour between darkness and the sun emerging over the mountain. Most days they don’t show but I am getting better at photographing them when they do make an appearance.
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