We’ve just had three lovely warm sunny days with no wind, so to make the most we visited the Cite of Carcassone yesterday. We had lunch out, then visited the inner castle and walked around half of the ramparts, giving us lovely views of the mountains and countryside all around, not to mention the interior of the old medieval town.
We took many more photos, but these are just a few to say Merry Christmas and wish you all a happy and healthy festive period.
I’ve been a bit busy, but once Boxing Day is over I will take time to visit your blogs! Sorry I have got behind on catching up with you all! 😘😄
All best wishes
Mandy and Keith xx
Keith standing and my brother sitting, squinting because of the sun!
I'm putting both these sites on one post so it's a bit photo heavy!
The first is just south of the city of Valencia, near a lagoon known as L'Albufera. The site, called Racó de l'Olla, is about 50 hectares in size but the area where visitors can go is quite small, however there is a useful visitor centre and the reserve was full of birds when we visited. There is an observation tower above the visitor centre, where I am taking a photo in the image below. There are a number of small lakes, some with islands or scrapes for birds to nest or just rest on. Also very useful were lots of info panels telling you the names of the most common shrubs and trees, most of which of course I didn't know from adam.
Photo credit: Keith Allen
Looking towards the main lagoon.
I was looking at the water in one of the smaller ponds and thinking, yuk, that's really murky around the edges. I then looked down and read the info board in front of me, and it all became clear. Read it - it explains all about the ecosystem of the lagoons and ponds. Click to view larger if necessary.
You might remember me mentioning the Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) which perched near me when I was in a hide - here are a few more shots of it. I can't get the colour any better than this in Lightroom, as it was very backlit so I had to really overexpose my images, and we were looking through glass. I'm still happy with the shots though. 😀
A bit later it then landed on the other (sunny) side of the hide, and I just managed a few quick shots not even very zoomed in, before it flew off. Such is life! It proves how important it is to take photos AS you zoom in, not just wait until you have zoomed in fully. You may well miss many shots that way!
This is a female Red-veined Darter (Sympetrum fonscolombii). I found a new site which is very useful, called Odo-nutters, which has good info about ID, always necessary when immature and female dragonflies can look so different to mature male ones!
Of course there were Flamingos!
Photo credit: Keith Allen
The waders in this shot are mostly Ruffs, though there are also Black Winged Stilts, Mallards and Little Egrets in the background.
Photo credit: Keith Allen
A closer up view of the Ruffs below, with a couple of Redshanks (the birds with red legs). In another shot there were some Little Stints, and a small Plover, not sure if one of the Ringed Plovers or a Kentish Plover, but it isn't worth sharing as they were quite distant.
Photo credit: Keith Allen
Moving on to the area across the road from our campsite, which was only a few kms from the bird reserve. Here it is very interesting as all this area had started to be developed with the tourist boom in the 1960s, then it was decided by the powers that be that it would be returned to the wild. There were info boards explaining this with photos of bulldozers getting rid of tons of concrete, and then the double dune system (see photo further down) was restored and - I'm not sure if it was replanted or left to nature to do its thing - looks very mature now.
Taken from this pdf which explains all about this area, known as Devesa:
"The process of urban development almost destroyed the Devesa as a natural space, but at the end of the 1970s the process of development was stopped and in 1980 the Valencia City Council created the Devesa-Albufera Technical Office which was responsible for the management, conservation and recovery of the space."
Lovely wide walking/cycling paths were laid through the dune slack area (the flat area between the dunes) leading to the beach, the bird reserve and a small lagoon near the sea.
This is the dune system. The sea is on the left and the Albufera lagoon on the right, with the lagoon side dune being more soil than sand, whereas the beach side one was more sand, thus different species of plants would grow in each habitat, and different creatures would inhabit each area. The whole area here is a narrow spit between the sea and the lagoon.
Me near the small lagoon, which you can just see.
Photo credit: Keith Allen
In this picture you can just see the city of Valencia in the background.
Photo credit: Keith Allen
Now we move much further south to the bottom end of the Valencian Comunidad near the border with Murcia, to a reserve called El Hondo (also known as El Fondo!). There is only a small area close to the visitor centre itself, although there are several other long paths you can follow, but trying to make sense of the maps it seems so you have to return the same way. There is another area which is closed off though I understand you can contact them to ask for permission to enter, but we didn't have time to do that.
We saw two lifers - both were species that we had read about before coming, which was why we came here! At the visitor centre there was a small pond which was visible through a huge glass window. Here were the Marbled Ducks (Marmaronetta angustirostris) that we had heard about, and also quite a few Purple Gallinules, oblivious to us watching them.
Photo credit: Keith Allen
Photo credit: Keith Allen
I managed this shot of a Purple Gallinule (Porphyrio porphyrio) through the glass.
Further along the walk were dozens of coots and the second target species was a Red-knobbed Coot (Fulica cristata) - have you ever heard of them? Keith hadn't, but I think I have seen them in my bird book. To ID them we had to scan through all the dozens of coots, not something I've ever done before as coots are normally so common one doesn't really bother much about them! 😀 We found several of the Red-knobbed ones eventually. They really do look rather strange with the red appendage on the top of their heads!
Photo credit: Keith Allen
Photo credit: Keith Allen
The icing on the cake at this site was seeing an African Monarch (Danaus chrysippus) again! I saw one by a beach in the Ebro Delta some years back which really confused me as I'd never heard of this species before. I was talking to our bird expert from Birding Languedoc recently and she said she had seen one once on the coast in the Languedoc, so they do get as far north as France occasionally.
Phew, did you manage to get to the end? Bravo to you! I put the different birding areas together as I haven't blogged for a while, so whilst I'm in the mood I'd better get it all done! I've also been busy wielding my paintbrush on walls again, although I have only done 1/4 of the room, because we wanted to get replace a hideous 1970s G-Plan corner cabinet that we inherited with the house. In its place is now a modern Ikea cubby unit with space for photos/ornaments and plenty of drawers and cupboards for all our photography gear. It's nice having everything properly organised for the first time!
My brother is coming soon, so I've got lots of things to do, like decorate, bake and housework, but I'll make sure I find time to come back to blogland to say something seasonal and visit your blogs. 😀
