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Sunday, May 15, 2011

“My” bee eaters.






The bee-eaters are birds , Meropidae is their family.

From my observations, I understood that they love warm temperatures, but not too hot. In fact I see, they arrive here around end of April and leave our places before July.

Then, I have seen several of them in July at Principina a mare (sea village near Grosseto, where I have spent my holidays when my son was small) . I suppose they move to the sea side because the sea breeze.

So I learn that most species are from Africa and Asia but others from the South of Europe, Australia, and New Guinea.

They are particularly beautiful since their colored plumage. The colours I could see are: yellow, green, red and turquoise.

Winds and tail are pointed and they are to swallows (even if bee-eater is bigger), Their bills are probing.

I knew that there are 26 different species of bee-eaters.

As their name tells us, they eat flying insect, basically bees !

They are gregarious and mainly monogamous (what a love ! ).

They arrive here, to my garden, 3 years ago.

Before that summer, they lived a couple of km far away and I was very invidious . It was so beautiful to see them while flying !

Now a part of them moved to me. I sit down under a tree and for a instant, I forget everything and everybody.




 

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Spring in my heart



I just came back from a 4 days break in Spain. I went there to visit my family, in a special way my mum.

I see her twice per year, usually in Easter first and in summer then.


This time I went there even the week after Easter since before it was impossible for me. 
For this reason, I was there in the very late April. 
Maybe the last time I visited my home-country in this period, was more than 20 year ago, before having got married. So I didn't remember how it was beautiful  in Spring.

The first surprise was the green explosion I found when I arrived in this sort of Spanish "Shangri-la".

Two years ago, a very terrible forest fire hit this "Paradise" and till this Spring I saw there desert and burnt landscapes.
Now for the first time in two years I have seen green hills again.

The second surprise was the many kind of flowers, with many kind of colours.

They were specially purple and yellow: two among my favourite colours.


I found many of them planted in gardens but also many of them around the fields growing wildly
             

Then, the trees... the ones which were saved. 

It seems that a "dry" storm was the cause of that tragedy . One thousand hectares of forest were burnt. However this place in my heart, located into a round valley, didn't suffered any damage but  the land around this natural circle was completely destroyed.
In any case, in this last week of April, it was splendid and  rigorous of life.