Flora and Fauna

A Historical Perspective

From Nicholas Luard 's “Andalucia: A Portrait of Southern Spain”

Wildlife

"... the Guadalmesi valley was home to several pairs of eagle owls. The largest owls in the world..."

[April-June: Africa bird migration]

[Reference to J. W. Carr, British Botanist] "Twice a year, in spring and autumn, millions of birds migrate from Africa to breed in Europe, and then as the summer wanes, return south again."

"Day and night from March to October the sky above...was a tumultuous flickering highway for unending caravans of aerial passengers."

"The best place to watch the migration from the Guadalmesí was on the shore at the valley's foot."

"Example birds: eagles, hawks, falcons, kites, harriers, v-tailed black kite, booted eagle, black vulture, Egyptian vulture, black-winged kite, golden eagle, osprey, imperial eagle, magpies, buzzards, greater flamingo, Audouin's gull, roseate term, rollers, bee-eaters, Eleonora's falcon... Eagle owl"

[Other wildlife: Viverridae, the Egyptian mongoose; Genet, Genetta genetta]

Cork Oaks

"Every oak in the valley, like all the oaks in the Campo de Gibraltar, had been declared part of the patrimonio nacional, the national heritage of Spain. Technically, not even the smallest tree could be felled without permission from Madrid. ...harvested every 9 years..."

"...when land changed hands the buyer, unless it was specifically included in the contract, did not acquire the rights to the cork. These were retained by the seller in perpetuity. If the purchaser wanted the trees, he had to buy, in the local phrase, suelo y cielo, the floor and the sky, and he would pay correspondingly more."

"When the bark was taken, the trunks were stripped bare from the roots to the start of the branches. Every year that followed produced a new layer of crinkly grey-brown fungus – the cork 'bark', in spite of its name, is not part of the tree but a parasite that grows on it – until the cork was one or two inches thick and the oaks were deemed ready for cropping again."

"Apart from the fires, the trees were attacked periodically in summer by a pest well-known in the USA but relatively uncommon in western Europe, the oruga or gypsy moth. ... For over half a century the forest had been attacked regularly every seven years [per records in Algeciras]. ...tiny green caterpillars striped with bands of red. ...they spun webs to help them move from branch to branch"