So im on a catch up of trips and sillys to write about.
Firstly I shall start with a day trip we had in August to see our friend Wael who has a house in a town called Otivar. Ian from Birdwatch Alpujarras came with us so on the way we did a spot of bird watching on the drive over and boy were the birds out in force for us.
In the forests above Albunuelas we saw many Bee Eaters, sitting on the wires, chatting away they are always just that little bit to far away for us to get a great photo but we have managed a few ok ones to give you an idea of what one looks like. Whilst watching these, a Booted Eagle came over head. Out of the forest now and re-joining the road, Ian shouted “stop the car”, Richard slammed the brakes on and we saw the biggest bird id ever seen, I thought it was a Terradactle!! Turns out it was a Short Toed Eagle, I guess the scale of it on the ground made it look huge as you only ever see them in the air. Once we had taken many photos of this Eagle, none of which do it any justice, a red squirrel runs along a branch next to the car, hops off onto the road and runs in front of us. After all the excitement we decide we should head on, the road is surrounded by crumbling granite pillars with the Rio Verde below, its always a stunning drive over with so much variation.
So we met up with Wael in Otivar and headed off on our walk up the Rio Verde. There used to be a path until 2 years ago when a storm washed it all away, so we boulder hopped, bashed our way through bamboo and then gave up and walked in the river. Once in the river we spotted a snake so we had to take photos of it to get it identified by the knowledgeable people of the Iberian Nature Forum. It got extremely hot and humid, we had forgotten that we had come down to only 300m above see level, compared to Lanjaron at a much fresher 650m. We came out of the river and started to head up hill, our destination was a lake but with the heat and humidity we abandoned that idea and headed back towards Otivar walking along dirt tracks, eating peoples blackberries, peaches, avocados, you name it we saw it growing there, and taking a short cut across terraces back to Waels house. We arrived at Waels dripping wet from the humidity.
We had a fun day, got some great photos and as always its a pleasure to be in Waels company.
Hope you like the pictures below.
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