Here are some of the natural history delights of the Dolomites. I’ve avoided duplicating species from my earlier Dolomites post. To see the images at full size, open them in a new tab or window.

Other sightings

Among other interesting finds (including species recorded in my earlier posting), I am pretty sure I heard the call of the Nutcracker, a small crow of forested mountains. A Black Redstart perched obligingly on a fence post, twitching its red tail. A surprised Stag, early one morning, bounded away uphill from a forest track: there were generally few signs of deer, though plenty of cattle and some horses grazing in the alpine meadows and forest clearings. A Hummingbird Hawkmoth hovered over the flowerbed near the house one morning, gathering nectar. Male Common Blue butterflies showed off their dazzling coloration of caerulean blue, but there were no Idas Blue butterflies, which I saw last time (at another time of year). Seen again like last time was the handsomely red/black striped bee parasite beetle Trichodes apiarius, plenty of Scotch Argus, one Chalkhill Blue, countless Marbled Whites, and plenty of Brimstones and Clouded Yellows, and one or two Speckled Woods. Common Heath moths were, well, common; they may not exactly be day-flying, but they’re readily disturbed in long grass.

We enjoyed seeing some familiar plants, too: Meadowsweet, never common in these hills, sticking strictly to very damp meadowland; the small yellow 4-petalled Tormentil, the delicate yellow Rock-rose, and the aromatic Wild Thyme, as much at home in the English uplands as here. Less familiar were the umbellifers (Apiaceae) Sweet Cicely and Broad-leaved Sermountain. Wild flowers that we saw that share the distinction of being also in our London garden include Eyebright and Self-Heal. Among the less usual ferns were Polypody and Wall Rue Spleenwort.

Reflections

It is hard not to compare the species richness of the flourishing alpine meadows and forests with that of Britain’s uplands. In Britain, sheep prevent trees from taking hold, and graze so severely that few flowers can grow. Farm subsidies and agricultural policy since the war have favoured production at the expense of wildlife; over 97% of Britain’s wildflower meadows, permanent pastures, have been ploughed up. Some of the ploughing was to enable reseeding with an “improved” grass mix, sometimes with clover. The result was invariably an impoverished agro-ecosystem, with far fewer species of grasses and flowers, far fewer insects, and degraded soil with fewer earthworms.

In some places, such as the chalk grassland near Beachy Head, the land was returned to pasture soon after the war with its urgent need for food. There is still, over 50 years later, a sharp contrast between the ploughed pasture land and the undamaged chalk grassland: the ploughed land has not recovered in that time.

It is no surprise that Britain’s bird, insect, and flower populations have collapsed. When hedges have been grubbed up and large fields carefully cultivated, after a while the farmer has a clean crop without flower “weeds” or insect “pests”, even without using herbicides or insecticides: there is no place for them to grow, no food for the insects to eat.

The only wild species that can survive in such a regime are efficient and troublesome weeds, like grasses too similar to cereal crops to be possible to spray; or genuinely pestlike insects, such as “cabbage white” butterflies, that can breed rapidly, fly or be blown long distances, and quickly destroy fields of Brussels sprouts if a farmer is unwary. All the more attractive and beneficial organisms are long gone.

See also Wildlife of the Dolomites (the animals and plants arranged into groups)