Apologies for the lack of posts this week, the result of a manic few days combined with leaving the English shores and under-scheduling. Hopefully things will be back on track now we have returned to the Southern Portugal. It is as glorious as albeit less colour than I recall from this time last year and previous years. I did find a little hidden away though.
We’ve not done much these past few days apart from recharge the batteries, restock the cupboards and sort the apartment. We have though managed a few short walks around the saltpans and on the islands. A slow yet perfect reintroduction to our Portuguese life, made extra special by the sunshine. In fact yesterday it was warm enough for frozen beer, and the day before there was a nudist in the saltpans. Fortunately the nudist did not scare off the birds.
Little seems to have changed, apart from the size of the salt mountain, which is good. However there are some horrendous plans afoot for Olhão, please do sign the petition if you haven’t already. We’ll may head up into the hills tomorrow if we don’t get waylaid at our favourite restaurant, but whatever we do I’ll be back with a proper post soon. For now though here’s the Egret who was most disgruntled we momentarily disturbed his fishing spot. I did apologise!
Beautiful colors, beautiful sky, beautiful birds! Happy to read you are back!
Thanks Liesbet – we’re incredibly happy 🙂
Fabulous images! Love the bird captures!
Thank you so much Amy ☺
Lovely shots. I love how muted the colours are but somehow still feeling warm.
Thank you so much . . .we were lucky as the weather has since changed!
I am curious. Do you have your own apartment here then Becky? Or do you rent a different one on each visit? I would love to escape the English winter for a month or two but I don’t really want to buy a second home as then I am committed to visiting the same place every time. Although you and Jo do make that option rather attractive.
No we rent as so cheap . . . and we currently rent in the same town each time as such a great location from which to explore plus birding on our doorstep which is an essential for MrB. We may move into the hills come Spring, all depends how busy it gets where we are.
such wonderful photos- I just love all the birds!
Thank you so much . . . .they are such fun to observe
I’ve got goose bumps at the thought of frozen beer and as for a nudist!
I couldn’t find the info in English but I’ve signed the petition anyway.
Thanks so much for signing 🙂
Second time we’ve seen nudists there. Most odd place as whilst fabulous for birding it is not a pretty spot nor that clean to sit on the beach/mud. Still they are happy I guess!
Yes, lovely egret shot and I’m not disappointed with the way it all looks, Becky 🙂
Not often I get that close…..in fact I had to zoom out to photograph her
I signed the Olhao petition, though I don’t know much about it. There were too many documents to download. Big changes?
Huge….including moving all fishing boats in front of markets to replace with a marina, building a huge building on front and much more. I agree some change is needed but there seems to be an all out plan to rid of the quaint and quirky 😕
I hate that! The place has so much character.
Exactly……if it changes too much won’t be any different from some of the towns in the east. Hopefully they’ll listen.
I’m jealous of you being back.
Please everyone – encourage others to sign and comment on the petition. There are many good ideas being expressed there. It’s clear that there is a great deal of love for Olhao, recognition that improvements are necessary but consensus that the planned direction of travel is misguided and damaging to the long term prosperity of the town.
You are so right about the plans. Looks as though quite a few have signed the petition so far, but as you say we need more to sign.
Love the egret!
As soon as we walked on she flew back to her spot 😊