VOL.37 NO.1 APRIL 2007 - British Shell Collectors' Club

PALLIDULA Page 6
Flexopecten proteus and some fantastic Tellina planata with a huge yellow blotch on white
backgrounds. We walked on for about a mile southwards and here we collected more than 50 pairs
of Donacilla cornea with a wonderful range of colours and patterns. We headed back to the car after
a super day’s collecting, totally delighted.
On our seventh day in Greece we sampled several
beaches on the Sithonia peninsula. I had read in
Greek travel guides that the bottom of this peninsula
was very much exposed to the elements and thought
that there could be some interesting species washed
up here. Our first stop was Porto Karra half way
down the west coast of Sithonia. This proved to be
very poor for shells on the beach, probably because
Set of colour variations of Donacilla cornea
it is located deep in the Kasandras gulf and it is not
so exposed to the open sea. As we drove south from Porto Karra we noticed a beautiful little stream
by the roadside. After dredging the stream no freshwater molluscs could be found at all. We did
however see many turtles and some huge frogs. The landscape on the Sithonia is breathtaking, it is
much more mountainous than Kasandra but unfortunately the Sithonian mountains form part of the
Serbo-Macedonian Massif range and the surface rock is primarily made up of Metamorphic Schists
which is just no good for shell building so no land snails could be found here either. The long
sweeping road took us right through the mountains and it seemed to be very difficult to find a way
down to the beaches, the fact that I tend to drive like I am in a rally probably didn’t help. We
eventually found the beach at Kalamitsi. The beach here consisted of a long sandy bay with rocks at
either end. As we worked our way towards the rocks at the far end of the bay we began to find
hundreds of good shells and Craig in particular did very well. Amongst his finds were Natica
stercusmuscarum, Clanculus corallinus, a beautiful Emarginula species and one near gem specimen
of Cirostrema cochlea, a rare find indeed! I imagine this beach could be very useful for the local
collector, particularly after a storm.
We pressed on in attempt to try as many beaches as possible and arrived at Sarti. In a small bay
here, just before the main beach we collected many nice gastropods on the rocks complete with
hermit crabs including Pisania maculosa, Sphaeronassa mutabilis, Euspira guillemeni and some
Gibbula albida with the most striking patterns we had seen. We moved on to the main sandy bay in
the town but unfortunately there was very little to be found there. Amongst other beaches sampled
on the peninsula were Koufos, Toroni and Kolgria. All of these beaches produced very few shells.
On the start of our second week in Greece we headed for the hills to the East of Thesaloniki to look
for land snails. We passed through a lovely little town called Panorama and soon reached about 6-
700metres altitude. We came across what appeared to be an old Limestone quarry. On a small area
near the car we collected some lovely Zebrina, Helicella and Helix melanostoma. As I searched
thoroughly with my nose to the grindstone I found some tiny snails called Cochlostoma. I collected
about 15 specimens. We then set off to look for freshwater shells. We drove 40km north west to the
Gallikos river at Mandres. The river here was quite wide but very shallow, no more than 2’ deep at
any point with platforms here and there. At the large road bridge we found a lot of flood debris.
Dredging the bottom sediment and the weeds failed to produce a single snail! And even the flood
debris was disappointing. We collected some small shells in the flood debris, mostly Planorbis
(Ram’s horn snails) and a few species of land snails which had been washed in to the river at some
point. We began the long drive back to the resort and stopped at Afytos on the East coast of the
Kassandra peninsula. Craig had read that Afytos was good for urchins and thought it could well be
good for shells also. Unfortunately there was very little there. We did however collect a couple of
interesting land snail species by the path down to the beach. It was hard going though because there
were huge wasps there and they were not very friendly.
The following day we decided to do a thorough search for good beaches on our peninsula, in
preparation for our last 5 days of the holiday when we would be without transport and would have to
rely on the local buses. The beach at Kalyves was our first stop and this was very poor for shells.
We then tried a lovely little place on the headland just south of Fourka called Poseidi. We walked for
about 1km before we found anything. At this point we found some very good shell grit. Within
minutes I had found 4 beautiful specimens of Truncatella subcylindrica. I filled a bag full of shell grit