Because we are travelling without a car, we tend to spend most of our time in towns. That could get a bit samey, especially as we are travelling quite slowly, so we don't get the rapid variation in the towns themselves that a flying visit gets.
So we take the time in most places to have a decent walk in the countryside. As often as not the local trams and buses run to right on the outskirts of towns so getting out of town isn't an issue.
There's usually marked trails we can find with a bit of research, but identifying which trail is which has been an issue. This has resulted in a few walks taking fairly sizable detours, although without actually getting lost (Google Maps is a life-saver in that regard, because we can always place and orient ourselves).
What has surprised me is how much variation in animal life we have seen, and also what we haven't seen.
Southern Europe was alive with butterflies while we were there, with huge numbers and lots of variety. There's a lot fewer to be seen now, but it may be because spring is their time. We've seen loads of dragonflies, damselflies and similar too – and the fish jumping to catch them.
Deer and hares are everywhere, and we see them out of the trains frequently. There's a lot of wooden structures on stilts in the fields in Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia etc that we assume people shoot them from.
In our walks in woods we have seen deer up close when we startled a pair that were resting and a fox who studied us briefly and then went on its way. Nothing particularly surprising there, but one day we were sitting on a fallen tree and a couple of owls flew overhead and landed about 30 metres away. I wasn't expecting to see any of them, given that we only go out in full daylight. They were creepy too, because they made absolutely no noise as they flew over.
We've seen surprisingly few squirrels though, even when walking in oak and beech forests. Perhaps they stay quiet in the heat, but the only time we've seen one not in a town park was when two were having a fight and the noise alerted us to them. We saw squirrels all the time in France, so I was expecting a lot more of them.
Alison is extremely good at spotting dead animals – she watches where she puts her feet far more than I do – and among others she's found a dead snake, a mole and a water vole.
My favourite sighting was a couple of days ago though. We were walking a cycle trail largely through open countryside, when Alison saw something in the distance. I went one side of the small clump of trees and made a lot of noise, and Alison stayed still on the other. Sure enough, a wild boar headed away from me, with two piglets in tow. We knew that there were boar in the woods, of course, I just never expected to see one.
But the incredible find was on an amble around Treviso early one evening. It is intersected by rivers, and we were alongside a not particularly inspiring one – I think it may have actually been a diversion to form a moat for the town – when Alison spotted an otter.
It seems that cleaner rivers and less hunting means that otters are recovering in numbers across Europe, but it was none the less a big surprise to see one inside a sizable town. We now scan every river for otters, but in vain.
So we take the time in most places to have a decent walk in the countryside. As often as not the local trams and buses run to right on the outskirts of towns so getting out of town isn't an issue.
There's usually marked trails we can find with a bit of research, but identifying which trail is which has been an issue. This has resulted in a few walks taking fairly sizable detours, although without actually getting lost (Google Maps is a life-saver in that regard, because we can always place and orient ourselves).
What has surprised me is how much variation in animal life we have seen, and also what we haven't seen.
Southern Europe was alive with butterflies while we were there, with huge numbers and lots of variety. There's a lot fewer to be seen now, but it may be because spring is their time. We've seen loads of dragonflies, damselflies and similar too – and the fish jumping to catch them.
Deer and hares are everywhere, and we see them out of the trains frequently. There's a lot of wooden structures on stilts in the fields in Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia etc that we assume people shoot them from.
In our walks in woods we have seen deer up close when we startled a pair that were resting and a fox who studied us briefly and then went on its way. Nothing particularly surprising there, but one day we were sitting on a fallen tree and a couple of owls flew overhead and landed about 30 metres away. I wasn't expecting to see any of them, given that we only go out in full daylight. They were creepy too, because they made absolutely no noise as they flew over.
We've seen surprisingly few squirrels though, even when walking in oak and beech forests. Perhaps they stay quiet in the heat, but the only time we've seen one not in a town park was when two were having a fight and the noise alerted us to them. We saw squirrels all the time in France, so I was expecting a lot more of them.
Alison is extremely good at spotting dead animals – she watches where she puts her feet far more than I do – and among others she's found a dead snake, a mole and a water vole.
My favourite sighting was a couple of days ago though. We were walking a cycle trail largely through open countryside, when Alison saw something in the distance. I went one side of the small clump of trees and made a lot of noise, and Alison stayed still on the other. Sure enough, a wild boar headed away from me, with two piglets in tow. We knew that there were boar in the woods, of course, I just never expected to see one.
It's not a great photograph – they really weren't much interested in hanging around us.
But the incredible find was on an amble around Treviso early one evening. It is intersected by rivers, and we were alongside a not particularly inspiring one – I think it may have actually been a diversion to form a moat for the town – when Alison spotted an otter.
It seems that cleaner rivers and less hunting means that otters are recovering in numbers across Europe, but it was none the less a big surprise to see one inside a sizable town. We now scan every river for otters, but in vain.
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