Peloponnese 26th of April – 7th of May 2006

Part 3: Mani peninsula - costal area

First of all we want to thank Eric Egerer for his hospitality in Kardamyli. We will never forget the beautiful hours we spent in Eric’s garden of Eden, watching lizards, tortoises and geckos or the romantic Bacalao candle light dinner (we ran out of electricity because of a thunder storm) in a small tavern in a mountain village where everything around us was flooded. It was an unforgettable week!

Concierge Wolfgang - Eric & Werner - Hemidactylus turcicus in the garden toilet

Full of enthusiasm, we started to search on a pass street.  Before we reached Kardamyli we found a new species: Ophiomorus punctatissimus, which looks a bit like a slow worm but shows its typical dots on its belly and easily loses its tail! The skink is rather short, rare and hard to catch. In total we found less about five specimens. On this site we also found a Hierophis gemonensis, which played dead like a Natrix and then suddenly disappeared. During this moist week blind snakes were a very common observation in areas with deeper soil.  They were always found under stones or even sometimes even mating.

After our first night in Kardamyli, Eric and Franz went to the hospital to treat the snake bite. On a meadow near the hospital they found a male Podarcis taurica, which seems to be missing on the Mani and reaches its southern limit in Kalamata. We couldn’t find these lizards on the Mani peninsula nor on the western finger.

We had horrible weather in the morning hours and we made a small sight-seeing tour along the coast to Trachila.  There, we had breakfast and drank some beer with natives. Suddenly the weather changed and we started to search for herps. Consequently, these were the most successful days in terms of herpetological biodiversity in our lives!  On average we found about 10 - 15 species per site (!), and most species were in high numbers. From the already mentioned species we found A. kitaibelii, P. apodus, V. ammodytes, P. najadum, P. peloponnesiaca, t. vermicularis, L. trilineata, H. gemonensis, M. kotschyi, A. moreoticus and M. monspessulanus (rare).

Really bad weather - Foto: Thomas, Driver: Christoph, Car: Hyundai Accent

Near a swimming pool we found a young Bufo bufo and a male Bufo viridis that was swimming in the pool. Our first Hemidactylus turcicus were found during a longer session in Eric’s garden toilet where three geckos were searching for shelter from the bad weather. Apart from this record we found H. turcicus only once in an olive garden on the road embankment where we also found two more beautiful Eryx jaculus about 40 cm in size. Two more juvenile Eryx were found by Eric in other habitats. In total we saw five Eryx, which is quite a lot for one week, but none of the boas reached the size of our Corfu specimen of 80 cm. The very common Testudo marginata, which was described as subspecies weissingeri, does not reach the size of the rest Peloponnese individuals. Eric with his long experience of breeding weissingeri and marginata found several differences between the two forms – hopefully he will let us know in a publication.

We also noticed that the local Testudo hermanni is a pygmy form compared to the tortoises further north. In contrast to T. marginata T. hermanni prefers the meadow terraces in higher elevation. We only found view hermannis while marginatas were more abundant.

Part4: Taygetos - Mani´s Roof

Part2: Short stops in the area of Megalopoli