Peloponnese 26th of April – 7th of May 2006

Part 6: The Basin of Feneos

After the visit of three peninsulas in the south part of the Peloponnese, we started to go north and passed some interesting places on the way to the plateau of Feneos. North of Tripoli we surprisingly found a skiing resort and the landscape (dominated by the local fir - Abies cephalonica) looked very similar to some alpine valleys. Before the pass road started, we stopped for the enormous spring of Ladanas river, which might be the origin of the disappearing river Olvios in the Feneos basin, but it is not proved yet.

Feneos pass

The basin of Feneos is bounded all around by high mountains. The few entrance roads (or ways) lead through passes of about 1300 m elevation and guarantee a unique isolated herpetofauna comparable to an island. We all wondered how so many species could immigrate into the highland basin, which lies between 750 and 1000 m. From the pass we had a wonderful view over the basin, which once comprised a huge lake. The shores can still be seen and the old villages give evidence for the erstwhile water level. Nowadays the lowland is used for walnut plantations, barley and oats growing. The temperatures dropped nearly to zero degree during the night and climbed only to eighteen degree during the days. We had a lot of rain, clouds and mist but we even found a lot of species especially during the short sun windows while we searched.

Werner visited Feneos several times and wrote papers about its herpetofauna. He also arranged some excursions together with three students of a German biological research group. Two of us (Werner and Hannes) could even stay in the research centre in Kalivia together with Rene, Aileen and Yvonne who came along with us during our search. The rest resided in a very fine hotel in Goura, where nobody spoke English or German.

Our first target was a recently built water supply dam surrounded by a natural forest, a meadow and stone walls nearby the outlet of the reservoir. We found A. kitaibelii, A. moreoticus, L. trilineata, P. peloponnesiaca, P. muralis and Podarcis taurica in a very high number although it was rather cold. Nearby the outlet of the reservoir we saw three remarkable coloured Natrix natrix with a weird dark pattern. Rene also turned a lot of stones and caught our only Natrix tessellata – thanks for this! Around the lake we found T. hermanni, P. ridibunda, R. graeca and the Germans told us also about Rana dalmatina, which Hannes found during his second stay in August.

About one km further we made our second stop and it was one of our best stations ever. Here we found both forms of the slow worm – while Anguis fragilis was rather rare, A. cephallonicus was very common with about 40 records. In about half an hour we caught several lizards, three big Malpolons, a very large P. najadum, one juvenile Z. situla (Wolfgang - what a common snake!) and some T. hermanni – the animals were all really slow, because the temperature was still about 10 degree but when the sun came out all reptiles had to come out. We have never caught Montpellier snakes or trilis so easily!

After our lunch break we drove to the impressive Olvios outflow, where a big river suddenly disappears in the rocks. Nearby on a stone slope we searched for Coronella austriaca, which Werner knew from this site. Coronella is very rare on the Peloponnese and up to now only half a dozen sites for its occurrence are known and mostly only one single snake was found. The only exception is the Olvios outflow, where Werner found a dozen of smooth snakes within one hour. Unfortunately we weren’t that lucky but we recorded some Bufo viridis, both slow worms, some lizards, one H. gemonensis and a nice big Z. situla (Wolfgang again!). Near Goura we again found most of the common species and additionally L. graeca, which inhabited the rocks above the village nearby the romantic chapel.

5th Historic Acropolis Rally 3 - 7 May 2006

The dinners during our stay in Feneos were unforgettable. Because we couldn’t communicate with the innkeeper, he took us to the kitchen showed us different meat and mentioned something like Arni, Chorino and some other weird terms and we decided what to take for our meal. It was quite funny when we mixed the words for a sausage and chard (a type of spinach) and finally we received a huge piece of meat together with big sausages as a side dish. The toilets were directly beside the dining room without a corridor between and the cook heated the pub with an oven (it was extremely cold) standing in the middle of the room and the chimney pipe run through half of the pub before it leads to the funnel. It was very interesting to see the standards of business establishments in this area. By the way – we believe there is no hairdresser in the basin of Feneos. The ancient Akropolis rally lead through Goura on the same evening and Wolfgang Rennfahrersepp Simlinger took some amazing pictures of the classic cars.

On our last day we had really bad weather, but we still wanted to find a new species and so we went to the upper reaches of the Olvios river searching for Podarcis erhardii. Werner explained to us the potential habitats of the rare lizard but we couldn’t find it, while the professor himself watched the area for half an hour an then moved to a small landslide, where he was successful and caught a couple of Podarcis erhardii. After the photo session and another search where we found M. kotschyi and a lot of other species, we decided to go for a beer, because the weather turned even worse and we discussed what to do for our last afternoon. Werner suggested to drive to another Feneos pass, where he once found his first Coronella.

It was very cold and windy up there and when we turned stones we found some B. viridis, L. graeca and P. taurica and suddenly Wolfgang found a juvenile Coronella austriaca under a stone – a very rare observation in this latitude.

After a nice evening in the restaurant our ways separated. The aeroplane team started their way back to Athens via Mycenae, while Werner and Hannes drove on via Attica to Euboea and further to Skyros. On their way back they visited Northern Greece before they drove back to Austria – hopefully they’ll provide a trip report soon! Here we want to thank the German team – Yvonne, Aileen and Rene – for their hospitality and their patience. Thanks guys!

Recapitulating we must say, that Peloponnese is the best place, we have ever visited in terms of herpetology and natural diversity and especially in richness of individuals.

Other species on the Peloponnese, which we couldn't find:

Telescopus fallax: After we found half a dozen of leopard snakes the cat snake is our only left target - maybe it was a bit to cold during the nights – who knows

Zamenis longissimus: This snake is very rare on this peninsula and only occurs in some places in high altitude areas
Triturus vulgaris and Triturus alpestris: We didn’t find both newts – according to Werner Mayer we didn’t visit the right places for the newts.
Pelobates syriacus: We also missed the Eastern Spadefoot toad, which occurs in the Arcadian highlands.
Pelophylax epeirotica: This green frog lives in the north-western Peloponnese, which we didn’t visit. 

Thanks to Faron Hrynewich and Matt Wilson for checking the English version of the trip report!

Part5: Pylos - The Western Peninsula