The road comes along showing you gently rolling plains of the province of Granada until campside is reached and we come to rougher outlines. On the way, every now and then, we come up on lagoons which are particulary interesting. Around you, watch the hill formations of the sierra which become higher and wilder at the side of the cultivated valley leading to Íllora. Places with an heritage in the midst of widely differing attractive landscapes through the province of Granada. Their agriculture is the principal occupation and provides an extra inducement for a fascinating journey.
Watching and being a nature person We start under a pine grove at the mountain called Parapanda. We can see remains of a pigeon. The first thing we could think about is: (what happened?) evidence. A body without brains. It couldn’t be done by a fox because he would have taken of the head, so it wasn’t an animal who ate meat. It could be an eagle, but here as well, an eagle wouldn’t come to the pine grove because it is the kind of animal who likes flying in open fields. It could be a gull? But they only attack small birds and the pigeon is to big for them. It could be the azores, this bird has short wings which makes it easy to pick up a pigeon and eat its brains, for them, brains are a delicious sweet, we have just interpreted a scene of a hunting crime.
If you go along through the pine grove, you will see the pine cones. There aren’t many in order to interpete what is going on. But if you go on walking you will see a lot of pinecones under the leaves of a tree. Some are underneath a pine tree. Others you can find underneath a leave, and some are together. This is easy to understand, this must be done by a nutty pine thief. (rat) how did we know that? With attention we could see that they are a little bit bitten and fell all together.
This couldn’t be done by a field mouse because it is to small to gather all the pine cones, not even when the pine cones are small, then as we know mice don’t eat on pine cones. For that we are able to identify the squirrel, by the way we were right, it was a squirrel, we have examinated the pine which was worst eaten, a mouse would have eaten it equally through the whole pine cone.
We go through a field and we come to a field full of fruits, who will live there? If we watch the last pine trees of the field, we can see on the tree a difference as if it was made open by some animal because we can find black thick hair as well, a pig must have been scratching here, looking for truffles, and than it must have been going round in the water which is around, we now are going past some cherry trees, there we can find cherry bones on the ground, which show us that different animals have been eating here.
Some have got holes in them. Made by rats or moles. Some are seperated, this must be done by big birds. we find carrots in the fields which are bitten into, and the responsibility is given to the rabbits. While drinking water at a fountain, we watch the fauna, which are habitating the cold water, we can see small insects gooing around. We find water plants on the banks of the river libelulas flying over the water this itinery reviews the animals under the water you can find small insects too.
Beetles looking funny as they go through the water, they are ditiscos (dysiscus mariginales) tadpoles go up and down to breathe and go under the water again. What kind of frogs they will turn into? Well, the water is cold, so it can’t be a toad, because they need higher temperatures, the water tank is too deep what means that they can’t be a normal frog or red toad.
But knowing that we are in Granada and the water is deep and cold, they must be betic toads (alytes dickhilleni) well this must be right because we can see the beginning of the tail where there is a V painted on which their are characteristics. On a spring evening it is easy to hear the song of the males a hoep hoep hoep, he same as another toad. Wherever you go, you can find evidence of things which can show you what happened or what is going on.
Going higher on the hills of Granada we find white balls of some 4 cm diameter. Made by hair feathers and
bones of animals. Thee are screments of a true owl with remains of food in it.
On the way home we find a nest of rats killed by a fox, we could only seethe
hair lying around. Every new piece of information shows us what is going on in the campside, while here if you have a chance, taste the game, particulary partridge or rabbit.