The passing storms, grey and massive, create wonderful light on the back road between Golubovci and Tuzi. The road passes through a wide plain (Polje) full of small farms then large fields, many of them flower-filled fallows, and vineyards. The air is humid and the day hot. Many farmers are working on tractors or behind rotovators…
Category: Balkan Wildlife
Godinje’s Knight of the Garter
Godinje is a pretty village the other side of the hill from Virpazar. Almost every house has neat signs on the road advertising their home-produced Vino, Rakija and Med (honey). The owners sit under the shade of a tree on the terrace or on a chair behind a desk laden with bottles eyeing the passing traffic. The…
The Prokletije Mountains
The tourist town of Plav, surrounded by blossoming plum orchards and set next to its pretty lake, and the smaller, more prosaic Gusinje sit beneath the Prokletije mountains within a broad valley joined by the meandering river Ljuča. The mountain range forms a natural barrier with Albania to the east and Kosovo to the north. Like…
Around the Lakeside Village of Dodoši
On the last day of April, I head to the north side of Lake Skadar between Podgorica and Cetinje and the lakeside village of Dodoši. The hills are south facing and the vegetation less lush than on the opposite side; the plants here are also more advanced with wild sage (Salvia officinalis) flowering as well as tall…
Lake Skadar Transitions
The enclosed lake beyond Vranjina has transformed from the winter view of ice blue waters and bare brown woodlands to water, jam thick with algae, lilies and reed, surrounded by shades of spring green willow and poplar. The rate of growth of the emergent vegetation over the past weeks after the temperatures increased and the cold winds died has…
Into the Kučka Krajina Mountains
The road to tiny Bukumirsko Jezero (Lake) high in the Kučka Krajina mountains, runs north from Podgorica for some 40km, passing the small villages of Ubli and Kržanja. The road on April 29th is blocked by a lens of lumpy snow on a north facing section about five kilometres from the lake; so I never make it…
Poseljani’s Rich History and Habitats
The road winds above Lake Skadar with panoramas of lake and forest around each hairpin; through the village of Kruševica where beekeepers tend the hives and signs hang above tables of laden with tall bottles; on through pretty Komarno, and, at the end of a steep slope with lake below, a new road descending the steep valley to the old…
Virpazar’s Glanville Fritillaries
On the hot afternoon of April 22nd after a long day, I saw my first fritillary butterfly of the year, which settled within spitting distance at the top of an area of long, abandoned terraced fields not far from the village of Kruševica on the Virpazar to Rijeka Crnojevića road. At the time, I was eating a bright red…
Evening’s End on Velika Plaza
Velika Plaza on this bright evening is huge, wild and exhilarating with a strong onshore wind, warm and welcome after a hot day; it is also cluttered with ramshackle summer cabins and endless, ugly litter, much probably brought up during winter storms but much also discarded by visitors. This evening the great beach is almost empty of people…
Ostrog White, Durmitor Dark, Biogradska Gora Light
The fast road from Podgorica to the large town of Nikšić runs up the south side of the Zeta valley and gives a distant view of the Ostrog monastery, white against the high, dark cliff. The monastery is a principal place of pilgrimage within the Serbian Orthodox Church and also much visited by tourists. A smooth road from…
Rumija’s Romans
April 20th is another brilliant day and Lake Skader ice flat, blue gin under blue sky. The villages and hamlets are alive with sprouting vines and emerging vegetables; an old woman bends over hoeing carefully along the rows. The surrounding wooded slopes are bright green swathes of hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) spattered with vanilla ice creams of flowering manna ash (Fraxinus ornus)….
Buljarica in Bloom
Buljarica was hot and humid under high sheets of cloud sliding slowly in from the Adriatic. The small meadows on the narrow coastal plain behind the huge reed bed have no gate just a piece of cord slung across the entrance and are now high with grasses, bright yellow brassicas and pale blue flax. The warm weather of the…