Member-only story
Tales about Snails
One for the Bucket List: Bielzia, Europe’s Most Glamorous Slug
Big, bold and brilliantly blue
Two years ago — it seems like a lifetime away — I visited Romania with Inala Nature Tours. We travelled over the Carpathians, through Transylvania, and across the steppes. Aboard a floating hotel, we explored the lakes and reed-lined channels of Danube Delta, where we saw Dalmatian pelicans, pygmy cormorants, and red-footed falcons. Although the tour was focused on bird watching, we looked at everything: mammals (from susliks to brown bears), reptiles and amphibians, wild flowers, and snails.
In a limestone gorge, where bellflowers and saxifrage grew in the cracks, I found plenty of land snails. Clinging to the cliff face were two or more species of clausiliids, and something that might have been a hygromiid, maybe Helicella. I had no idea. My knowledge of western European molluscs was dodgy enough. With eastern European species, I was completely out of my depth. (I have now shelled out for an identification guide.) (Ed: — Did you just…Never mind.)
One species that I would love to see — and which I am sure I’d be able to identify…
