2025-03

3rd March 2025

In recent days we have been lucky enough to see two sorts of lupin (US spelling is lupine and Hebrew word is turmus possibly related to the word thermos [= warm, hot]). These two types are the deep blue lupin (Lupinus pilosus) with a white splodge in the middle of its blue petals, and the pale blue and white Israeli lupin (Lupinus  palaestinus). Beautiful as the flowers are, I particularly like to look at the lupin’s wonderful palmate leaves.

You might think me a little loopy, but I must tell you that when I see lupins growing, I do wonder what is lurking beneath them. The Midrash (Gen Rab 79:6) relates that the great second century sage, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, planted lupin seeds in Tiberias (our hometown) to determine whether the ground below was part of an ancient cemetery. Where there were skeletons below, lupins grew from the seeds – but lupins didn’t grow where there was an absence of bones. And, by the way, I’ve checked – there are no skeletons in my closet.

Lupins are edible and have been eaten for thousands of years – the Talmud (Beitzah 35) states that the leguminous beans are as bitter as can be, but if boiled in water seven times they become sweet and can be wolfed down along with the tastiest of desserts. Though I have to say, rather than turmus for dessert, I think I shall stick with tiramisu.

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Have you ever read H.G Wells’ novel ‘The Invisible Man’? I wonder if he got the idea from the false Apollo butterfly that I wrote about last week. It wasn’t clear from last week’s photo that this amazing little butterfly can be almost as invisible as Wells’ eponymous character. As the butterfly ages its wings become more and more transparent. The elderly butterfly I saw a few days ago at Gamla was barely noticeable as it rested on a yellow flower. It does make you wonder why other critters don’t use this method of camouflage. Well, actually, a few do, including glass frogs, the glass octopus and some jelly fish. Watch out next time you’re swimming in tropical waters.

2025-02

24th February 2025

Ramat Hanadiv, which includes the Rothschild Memorial Gardens and Nature Park next to Zichron Yaakov, is a truly remarkable place for nature lovers. Its 470 hectares is home to 656 species of wild plants - about a quarter of Israel’s plant species - and about a third of all butterfly and mammal species of Israel. It’s certainly one of our favourite haunts and what a metamorphosis we’ve seen over the last couple of months. Not very long ago the fields were dull brown, showing little signs of life. Now they are covered in beautiful flowers, particularly red (and a few purple) crown anemone’s (Anemone coronaria = kalanit in Hebrew) and white Venus’ comb (Scandix verna), which is also known as shepherd’s needle – and one of my favourites, the spectacular Judean viper’s bugloss (Echium judaeum) a member of the borage family (see accompanying photo) – borage rhyming with porridge. The bugloss is named for its style – the tube supporting the stigma - resembling the forked tongue of a serpent.

Last week, on a lovely sunny and warm day, I saw lots and lots of very hungry caterpillars eating all before them. Then I had a brief encounter with a rather beautiful butterfly. The false apollo, which is classified as near-threatened, is so called because it looks a little like, and tries to mimic, the apollo butterfly. And the apollo butterfly is named to reflect its ‘worship’ of the sun – Apollo being the so-called god of the sun. It rests with wings splayed soaking up warmth from the sun. Just before it landed in front of me to do a bit of sunbathing, it hovered above the ground then descended like it was an Apollo Lunar Module floating on to the moon’s surface. A few seconds later it launched itself, orbited me twice and off it went – leaving me to think of its wonderful metamorphosis - egg, caterpillar, pupa and then butterfly.

After a coffee break in the café overlooking the olive grove, I visited one of my favourite froggeries – Ramat Hanadiv’s lily pond. There were lots and lots of little tadpoles, which were probably just as hungry as the caterpillars I had seen earlier. I managed to creep ever so carefully and quietly towards a sun-seeking frog. This little marsh frog, not even half the size of my hand, launched itself downwards to take cover below the lily pads as soon as it saw me – leaving me to think of its wonderful metamorphosis - egg, tadpole, froglet and then adult frog.

What a remarkable place Ramat Hanadiv is, and what a truly remarkable world we live in - a world that has allowed me to metamorphose from a desk-bound British high-tech consultant to a sun-loving Israeli nature-watcher.

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18th February 2025

For various reasons, I haven’t been able to write my blog posts for the last couple of months, but I hope to resume now. And what a lovely time it is to be out and about in the countryside of Israel. The fields are quite a bit greener, flowers are carpeting the hillsides and birds are happily singing. The war situation has changed somewhat too in the last few months and, thank Goodness, some of the hostages have been released from Gaza, albeit at a possibly considerable cost to the future safety of Israel. We hope and pray that all the hostages will be released soon and that our fears for the future will prove unfounded.

I photographed a bird during a winter visit to the Hula Valley – which leads me to ask the following question. Do birds have whiskers? I guess that many people would be surprised to know that indeed, some birds do have whiskers – they’re known as rictal bristles. These bristles or whiskers are thought to aid the bird in assessing its speed. The bird I saw was a tern, the whiskered tern, which is a common winter visitor to Israel, though not as common as the common tern.

In many ways terns are similar to gulls in appearance, but terns are smaller and more agile, having a sharper and more streamlined profile than the stockier gulls. They plunge into the water to capture fish which is their staple diet. Gulls, on the other hand, will eat anything and are particularly fond of ice cream, as my daughter will testify, having lost her ice cream, aged ten, to a large and ravenous gull, which swooped in over her head just as she was about to take the first lick.