00:17To be continued...
03:24So hello my friends, as you've probably gathered from the title of this video and from the opening footage,
03:35the forest that I've been shooting in, just up the road from where I live, just down the coast in
03:42Athens, caught fire about 10 days ago.
03:46I've only the last couple of days been allowed up here at all, and the devastation is horrific and very,
04:00very upsetting.
04:06I really have been wanting to make this video now for the last week, but I'm not sure I have
04:13the words for it.
04:23This is the ravine that I've been filming and shooting at down here.
04:31And as you can see, as you can see, a lot of the mountain forest is gone. All the green
04:38is gone. And the entire ravine is burnt and bare and pretty much devoid of life.
04:53So many animals have been lost.
04:56So many animals have been lost. I haven't found any foxes or badgers or anything after walking through, and I
05:02hope not to find any either.
05:04It's bad enough finding all the tortoises along the way, which had no opportunity whatsoever to escape the flames.
05:14The foxes, I guess, and maybe the badger could move out of the way, run away from it.
05:23But everything else, all the snakes and lizards and tortoises, they all just burnt in place.
05:29And one of the really upsetting things for me is that a few weeks ago, a couple of months now
05:36actually, when I was setting up the trail cams and the camera trap to try and capture a fox or
05:44a badger or something along the ravine here.
05:48I don't know if you remember, if you watched that video, if you recall me seeing, spotting a sparrowhawk.
05:56And I kept that in mind, that brief sighting, because when I saw it, it was carrying a twig in
06:05its mouth, which meant that it was nesting along here.
06:09And it took me a good couple of weeks of searching up and down every single tree in the ravine
06:14here, and I eventually found its nest.
06:17And I set up the trail cam on a close by tree to observe the nest.
06:24Because when I actually found the nest, it was empty, so I wasn't 100% sure when I located the
06:29nest, that it was the sparrowhawks.
06:33So, and it looked actually like it was a previous year's nest, abandoned.
06:38So, I set up the trail cam and let it run for a week.
06:43And during that week, I caught male and female sparrowhaw coming to the nest.
06:50No eggs yet.
06:51And I thought, you know what, I'm going to take down the...
06:54I took down the trail cam, basically, because I didn't want to disturb them any more than absolutely necessary.
07:00And I let them be, for all this time I've been letting them be, not coming to the area at
07:05all,
07:06so that they could get on with laying their eggs and starting to raise their chicks this month.
07:14And I had planned to come, not this week, next week, to actually see if any chicks had hatched,
07:25and to maybe film them and get some photos.
07:29And it was basically just back here.
07:31You see the bluff along here.
07:34That was... I was planning to walk up on the other side of the ravine here,
07:39and I could actually see down into the nest from the opposite side.
07:43And it would have been a good spot without disturbing them at all.
07:47And a raised point, you know, point of elevation to actually see down into the nest.
07:53And the nest is now gone.
07:57Hopefully the sparrowhawks, they flew off, so they survived to fight another day.
08:05But everything else is gone.
08:09And it's just exceptionally sad.
08:14So, yeah, that's the news from here.
08:18Not beautiful photography or filming or anything like that.
08:22Just sad news that I wanted to share.
08:30So, anyway, okay.
08:33Hopefully in the coming weeks I'll be able to provide some slightly more positive, happier video and photography for you
08:42to enjoy.
08:43So, until then, I'll say bye bye for now.
08:46Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.
08:48Bye for now.
09:13Bye.
