Nature in the footsteps of St Paul

We took a late spring break to northern Greece, studying history and natural history, often in close combination.

The first stop was the major port of Thessaloniki, a fascinating, vibrant city dotted with Byzantine churches and Roman and Greek remains whose grey and white boulders were decked with clusters of vermilion-red poppies.

Here the skies were full of swifts — our own familiar common swifts, but also pallid swifts and the larger alpine swifts, the latter nesting here at sea level despite their name. Starlings swooped to their nests in the walls of the fortress-prison of the citadel.

We walked back via Vlatodon Monastery, just outside the walls, with a beautiful Byzantine church, tended by monks. The 14th-century basilica was built on the site where it is thought St Paul first preached to the Thessalonians and it afforded some wonderful views over the city, down to the huge harbour front, with, in the distance to the south-west, Mount Olympus, seemingly floating above the clouds on the horizon.

A drive east to Keramoti took us to the ferry over to the wooded island of Thasos, accompanied by dozens of yellow-legged gulls, doubtless hoping for scraps of food. They resemble our familiar herring gulls, but have yellow rather than pink legs, and slightly darker backs.

On Thasos, a walk up the hill from the harbour to the Greco-Roman theatre passed through scrub of evergreen oak, olive, pistachio, bladder senna, cistus, and honeysuckle leading up to the ruins of the acropolis with splendid views over the port and coastline.

Among the many bees and other insects, we spotted a southern white admiral feeding on a flower of Christ’s thorn. Honeysuckle is the sole larval foodplant of this beautiful butterfly.

An expedition up into the hills took us to the delightful old village of Mikros Prinos surrounded by wooded hills and olive groves. Here the only sounds were the buzzing of bees and a chorus of nightingales which seemed to be everywhere, lurking out of sight hidden deep in the scrub.

My wife startled a solitary hoopoe, which whirred up out of a bush in front of her as she rounded the bend of a deserted track. Broom, smoke-tree, and cistus grew wild at the roadsides. Every small town or village has its square, usually dominated by a shade-giving plane tree, some hundreds of years old, many of them hollow, propped up and lovingly preserved.

Back on the mainland we drove inland from the pretty port of Kavala to the amazing archaeological ruins at Ancient Philippi. This is where St Paul brought Christianity to the west, preaching to the local people. Signs led us to the stony enclosure where Paul and Silas were allegedly imprisoned, a spot which attracted a crowd of faithful pilgrims to the otherwise sparsely touristed site.

As a naturalist, I was particularly struck by the rich wildlife living in and around the ancient stones. Bee-eaters glided overhead, uttering their characteristic bubbling calls, and we spotted a few red-rumped swallows amongst the common swallows and house martins. But first prize had to go to a very special bird that seemed to regard the Roman forum as its personal breeding ground: black-eared wheatears nest here in rock crevices, often perching high on the stones or circling in display.

Their song is a pleasant, short warble, rather like that of our common whitethroat. I noted that some had a black chin as well as black ear patches.

On our car journey back to Thessaloniki we departed from the big toll road to drive alongside Lake Volvi on a wonderfully quiet route, passing the occasional rambling tortoise.

At a pleasant lakeside cafe, where local men were sipping coffee and chatting in their unhurried way, we gazed out over the placid water. Farmyard geese dabbled in the shallows by the cafe, while out on the lake wild birds ruled the waters.

Though we were at this idyllic spot for only a short time, we spotted herons (including a purple heron), cormorants, pygmy cormorants, great-crested grebes and, right over the other side, small fleets of pelicans, keeping a wary distance from humans.