2024-07

24th July 2024

Gold
We've talked in the past about golden animals and birds - goldfinches, golden jackals and golden skinks. I'd love to find and photograph a golden eagle, but they're not often seen in Israel, so today we're going to look at golden trees - carob trees and eucalyptus trees.
Carob Trees
The Carob is a member of the legume family, and is indigenous to Israel and much of the Mediterranean region. Carobs are referred to in the Talmud as a staple diet, though these days, apart from in times of great need, their fruit is primarily fed to animals. That said, they are also used as a chocolate substitute. The tree doesn't look golden, nor do its long chocolate-brown fruit pods. But for hundreds of years, the carob has lent its name to the standard measure for gold, the carat (‘carat’ being the Italian/Arabic/Greek name for the carob.) Twenty-four carob seeds were the weight of the Roman solidus coin, and pure gold came to be known as 24 carat gold (not a golden carrot in site). It is seven or eight years before a young tree will produce pods, and the pods themselves take a year or so more to develop and ripen. And after all that, once ripened, the beans are somewhat smelly.
Eucalyptus Trees
Unlike carob trees, eucalyptus trees are not native to Israel, but were imported from Australia. When Israel was resettled by pioneers some 150 years ago, much of the land was uninhabitable, covered in swamps, that were the home for malaria-carrying mosquitos. To make the land fit for farming and the country safe for habitation, the swamps had to be drained. Eucalyptus trees, with their great thirst for water, did a wonderful job. Some of the roots of eucalyptus trees go so deep into the earth, that if there is 'gold in them thar hills' the gold is absorbed and ultimately finds its way to the leaves of the trees. So 'gold in them thar leaves' makes eucalyptus leaves worth their weight in gold - and gives a whole new meaning to 24 carob gold-leaf.

The photographs include a carob tree and carob beans from the nature park at Ramat Hanadiv, and a eucalyptus tree in the Switzerland Forest just above Tiberias. Eucalyptus trees were planted on the hills above Tiberias to help prevent lethal mud slides in rainy seasons.

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14th July 2024

We have just spent two weeks in Leeds, in the UK, where it was somewhat cooler at 17-19°C than it was when we left Tiberias at 39-41°C. The trip gave me plenty of opportunity for reminiscing and also a chance to take photos of birds and animals, some of which we also see at home in Israel, and some that we don’t.

As children at junior (elementary) school, each morning we were given a small bottle (third of a pint) of milk to drink. I hated that milk, as did all my friends. It was never cold and always had a thick fatty-cream top to it. We weren't given the choice of ‘take it or leave it’ - it was mandatory, like it or not. It was enough to make a child want to become a vegan. Eventually, we were saved - the free school milk was withdrawn by the Education Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, who was dubbed ‘Thatcher the Milk-Snatcher’. The glass milk bottles, just like the ones that were delivered to our doorstep at home each morning, had a metal foil cap and if the bottles were left outside for too long, they became a target for blue tits who would peck a hole in the foil cap and feast on the cream at the top of the bottle. It is thought that the birds learnt this bottle-opening trick from watching others do the same. We might think that birds have birdbrains, but actually they're far cleverer than we give them credit for. In later years, in an attempt to foil the birds, the glass milk bottles were replaced by plastic bottles, with heavy duty plastic lids. But guess what? Those clever little birds learnt how to peck through the plastic too. And by the way, did you know that while British children were served milk at school, French children were given a glass of wine with their lunch. If Mrs Thatcher had replaced the milk with wine, she’d have been the most popular politician ever. And I’m sure the blue tits would have been happy too.

During our visit we saw many magpies by the roadside and many red kites circling above. As a child I was intrigued that magpies, which we saw frequently, were well known as collectors of silver rings, which they would pilfer by wandering into people's houses if they left the door or a window open. Maybe that's why the collective noun for a magpie, is a mischief of magpies. Turns out though, that actually magpies aren't attracted to silver or shiny objects at all. This seems to be an anecdotal myth. Scientists investigated and found that magpies are no more attracted to shiny metallic objects than any other sort of objects. So maybe they are birdbrains after all.

Not so long ago we didn't see red kites. They were virtually extirpated from England until they were reintroduced in the late 1980s/early 1990s. They now breed successfully and there are about 10,000 in England. A great success for conservationists, but of course one bird’s dinner comes at the expense of other birds’ survival, when supplies are scarce. Like magpies, red kites are also known to pinch things. In Shakespeare’s time they were known for pinching washing that was hanging out to dry. In his play The Winter’s Tale he wrote "When the kite builds, look to lesser linen." It reminds one of the rhyme in which the maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes when down came a blackbird and pecked off her (nose) clothes.

Two highlights of the trip for birdwatching were a visit to Bempton Cliffs on the east coast of England and a visit to the Bacall Bird Observatory in Manchester (where, as usual, we were fed fine cuisine in the excellent ‘restaurant’). At Bempton Cliffs I focussed on gannets - huge birds with a wingspan of about 6 ft (1.8 meters) and was lucky enough to capture a gannet (called Janet) in flight. Meanwhile, Miriam searched out and found a puffin. The weather in Manchester was more suited to those with webbed feet than to Israelis who are used to a hot dry summer. So on a rainy day, from behind glass, I photographed a male blackbird with orange eye-ring, a little brown dunnock, a red-faced goldfinch and a grey squirrel (called Cyril). And I’ve included a head and neck portrait of a Canada goose that I met in Leeds.

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12th July 2024

What are we to make of the skink with its tiny legs? Is it a lizard, with reduced-size legs, or a snake with little legs appended? First of all, let’s make it clear that a snake isn’t a limbless lizard, nor is a lizard, a legged snake. Snakes are snakes and lizards are lizards – two separate families. Skinks, though they look a halfway house, are actually lizards, not snakes. So if snakes manage without legs, and lizards with legs – why does the skink have just short legs? Scientists have shown that without legs it’s easier for a creature to burrow. And with legs it’s easier to walk on wet ground. So, the skink with its short legs is a bit of an all-purpose ATV (all-terrain vehicle).

I photographed this skink at Ramat Hanadiv recently. It is the golden skink, which is Israel’s longest species at about 18 inches from head to tail. It walked across the car park – stayed still long enough for me to take its photo and then skulked off into the surrounding shrubbery.