Tag: birdwatching

weeknotes, 40/24

world postcard day week! the day passed without much of a hitch, just a lot of adrenaline, lots of chocolate cookies and many things to check on. i filmed my first reel on instagram, just a little video of of my bike ride to post postcards on all the old postboxes in town. it was quite a warm day, so not my brightest idea, but i survived!

and after all the excitement of the big day, we took off to sagres, for four days at the yearly birdwatching festival — something we look forward to all year. this year, we tried to enjoy other activities and workshops on topics we weren’t so familiar with. so we tried sea kayaking, field sketching, painting with pastels, identifying insects and moths, ringing birds and making maritime knots.

these were very full days, but also, a very much needed break, with amazing food, in a town that has become one of our favorite places in the country. on the last day, we had a walk with simon (a guide we met last year already) and saw lots of nice birds — including some wheatears, skylarks, red-billed choughs and some rareish eurasian dotterels, passing through on their way from siberia to africa. it was a beautiful way to wrap up the festival, and to decompress from a few (very long) months of work.

birdwatching in taiwan

more taiwan birds

let me just make note of a few more birds we saw in taiwan, because they don’t exist in this part of the world, and so it felt extra special to see them. first up, the light-vented bulbul, our first ever bulbul. a little bird, that seems like it has been snowed on:

next, the chinese bamboo partridge! we spotted them next to a patch of bamboo and while we watched with the binoculars, a couple of taiwanese hikers walked by, curiously looked at where we were looking and exclaimed “ah! bamboo chicken!” :D

the common myna seems so used to people in taiwan that they get really close to us in the city…

and look at the black bulbul, with its spiky hair… a funky sight!

just as funky was the malayan night heron. it’s a big, stern-looking bird, and the juveniles look less rust-colored than the adults. i learned that the technical term for the color is “rufous”.

and last but not least, we saw some oriental turtle-doves with their stripes on the neck (and the spotted dove too in the south, but i didn’t get a good picture).

this concludes the brief tour of birds we saw in taiwan! i think it’s one of the brilliant things of being so far from home, and especially on an island: every bird we saw seemed new and made us look more closely, even sparrows and doves.

analogue wednesdays birdwatching

analogue wednesday #271

these days, our eyes instantly go to anything flying overhead, to wires and tree branches, towards any sound we vaguely recognise. birds are everywhere, once you learn to see and hear them!

algarving in portugal

bee-eater update

remember the bee-eater from week 27? turns out, the little guy had some spinal trauma and paralysed legs, and we were told the prognosis wasn’t great… so we held our breath and held on to hope for a while, and it paid off!

although he wasn’t 100% recovered, the doctors at rias thought he was strong enough to have a good chance of survival, and the timing was right to release him before they all migrated to africa… so off we went to do that. our friends were around and took some really nice photos.

isn’t that the most beautiful bird? i was a bit sad we hadn’t gotten pictures of it on the day we delivered it, as we were too scared to hurt him further, and thought for sure we would never get another chance to see a bee-eater so close again in our lives… but he pulled through, and so we were lucky to be able to send him off. :)

i did a little video too, to mark the day:

hurray! fly safely little one!

just life weeknotes

weeknotes 27/21

it’s been an eventful week around here!

– deers! 😍 we went walking in the local park today, and the guard let us feed the deers, which seem to have significantly multiplied since the last time we were there, a couple of years ago. they were super curious and came over afterwards to check on our picnic too.

– i finished reading a beautifully foolish endeavour, which was a great sequel to an absolutely remarkable thing. it reminded me that i like fiction, and should probably read more of it.

– the bamboo is still shooting upwards, now growing at a rate of 10cms/day… whoa.

– we helped both an 80 year old and a bee-eater this week! the 80 year old was slumped on the side of the road, having fainted from the heat after a bike ride in the midday sun. after the ambulance people declared him well-enough to go home, i gave him a ride and the boy rode his bike back. the bee-eater (one of the most beautiful birds you can find here) was found by the boy on the side of the road on one of his runs. he ran past him, and when he came back he was still there… so he came home, showered, and we drove by again — still there. :( the little thing was having trouble flying, so we picked him up before he was run over by cars, and drove him to RIAS. hopefully he’ll be in good hands and back flying soon!