Parrots in a palm tree

I thought I would quickly post a photo of these parrots. I took my mother-in-law to the beach for a walk this morning and there were dozens in this palm tree, thoroughly enjoying the dates. Many flew away as we approached, but there were still a few left.

See how many you can find ; )

As you can see, we are still enjoying beautiful, sunny, warm days. I wonder how many of you are under two feet of snow already...

Field trip - Montmell from the other side.

When our children were small we had a seven seater, all terrain type vehicle which took us everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE. One of those places was round the back of the mountains we can see from our house. Basically, it means taking a dirt track into the middle of nowhere.

Last Sunday afternoon we tried to get as close as possible to one of our favourite old haunts, la masia de Torrossolla. As we had to leave our little car quite a way off, we decided we didn't have enough time to reach the 'masia' on foot so we opted to walk instead to Can Magí Vidal.

Here are some photos:

Our idea was to go around this mountain to visit the other side

Going up Sugar Mountain

Typical fern from the north face of the mountain

Fonoll (I don't know its English name)

The Masia de Torrossolla - from a long way up!

Can Magí Vidal through the undergrowth

Large, unidentified mushroom

Large, unidentified beetle

Jay

Prunus Spinosa - otherwise known as Sloes

Well, as you can see, this was quite the nature walk. It was lovely, once again, to get out and enjoy the area we live in. Although the afternoon was scorching hot, much of our walk was in the shade of woodland and big, bushy plants.

Note: the photos of the fern, the flower, the sloes and the jay were taken from internet. I often forget to take photos as I am too busy enjoying the real thing :)

Spring/summer visitors

Goldfinch

Bee eater

Hoopoe

Golden Oriole

Swallows, in the awning of our shed roof

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will have realized that I love birds. These are some of our more colourful spring/summer visitors, although we do hear the cuckoo in the valley below and greenfinch, polly wagtails, blackcaps and fly catchers are among the many which visit our garden. All of the photos are taken from Google Images except the last one which is courtesy of Dear Hubby!

The Golden Oriole - a very efficient alarm clock!

During the spring this lovely bird wakes me up at around 6.15 every morning. What a beautiful song.

There seems to be two different types of oriole on this video. The one we hear is the first. (It changes at 1.00) If you listen very carefully at the beginning you can also distinguish a cuckoo singing in the background.

Oh my, oh my (family)

My children are...well...very special.

At the weekend, whilst waiting for lunch to be served my son (23yrs.) saw a bird's head and beak on the white board. (It's actually an ice-cream magnet.) He added the rest of the bird.

Fine. No problem.

This morning I (23 x 2yrs.) remembered a haiku poem which I composed a couple of years ago. So as to not forget it again, I wrote it in a space on the whiteboard.

Fine. No problem.

I came back some minutes later to find that my daughter (23 - 3yrs.) had added her bit to the white board.

Fine? No problem? That is a matter of opinion!

I thought I would take a photo and publish the whole story so that you could see and maybe understand the psychological pressure and freakiness I have to live with! (Ignore the red snake at the bottom of the photo. It is part of another blog post, actually)

 

The original bird is in the middle, my fancy haiku on the left and... well... the rest needs no explanation.

My birthday outing, July 6th

I love birds of prey and this year for my birthday present everybody put money into a hat to pay for a visit to a bird of prey training centre. At the moment they have only four birds but they do want to expand.

We had an exclusive session where we were introduced to the birds. We were  then told about their habits, food, flight patterns, etc. and after that we flew the birds ourselves.

Take a look at these photos:

Oishibi is an eagle owl

Quito is a peregrine falcon

Pepe is a buzzard

Azahara is a larger kind of eagle owl

We flew two of the birds only because of difficulties with Azahara and Quito. Azahara was moulting which meant her hormones made her much wilder, with a large possibility that she would escape. The experts flew her, but tied on with a long cable! Quito was also moulting, didn't want to fly and wasn't hungry!  

More photos:

My son with Pepe

A. chatting with Pepe

Me with an eagle owl on my arm! WOW!

That was the first part of the day. For lunch we went up the mountains to a park we had been told about. It was a pretty park and we were the only people there for a good while. We ate in the shade of a strange building, looking over the valley where we had spent the morning.

View of the valley

While some dozed...

...others prepared for a water fight!

And welcome it was, too. With the temps. 35ºC +, this is something that nobody complains about!

Sadly, at the end of the day, we had to take our friend D. back to the airport to catch his flight home.

L'Estany d'Ivars, Vilasana

Last Thursday (8th August) we went to this beautiful lake. It was another hot day but we enjoyed it immensely. The path around the lake is about two and a half kilometres and every so often there are watchtowers so that one can see the fauna and the view without being a bother. There was also a prepared picnic place where we ate our sandwiches, with views across the lake.

The lake

These are just some of the birds we saw:

Bee eater

Red heron

Little grebe

Storks

Crested grebe

White heron

Black-winged stilt

Western marsh harrier

All of the bird photographs are taken from Google images. The photos are as we saw the birds. I took my camera with me but we focused on watching them with binoculars. It was so beautiful.

The wise old owl

 The wise old owl sat in an oak,

And the more he saw the less he spoke.

The less he spoke the more he heard.

Wasn't he a wise old bird!

Sparrow in the rain

I still haven't decided whether the photo was supposed to be of the sparrow or the rain. I'll go for the latter. Sparrows are cute birds but I see them every day. Rain is such a rarity!

Birdsong

I Déu creà... tot ocell alat segons la seva mena.   Gènesi  1 : 21

Y creó Dios... toda ave alada según su especie.   Génesis  1 : 21

And God created... every winged fowl after his kind.   Genesis  1 : 21