Sunday birding extra

This Sunday, the last in Trinity, or Bible Sunday, or Church Dedication Sunday, take your pick. After a good ten hours slumber, I drove out to celebrate the Eucharist with the Llanos congregation, fifty odd people, as I wasn't surprised that there was confusion around the choice of readings that were intended for use, due to a last minute change, not in my control. 

The Revised Common Lectionary as authorised by the Church of England, and broadcasted by its marvellous web app, provides for all three of options for use on this day. Making the decision and informing others about which set of readings to use is not straightforward. It relies on everyone getting and reading emails in the event of any changes occurring between different congregations and preachers. The complexity of the lectionary doesn't help everyone to keep up to speed. 

We're already messed about too much by having Continuous and Related streams of Old Testament readings to decide upon, let alone completely different sets of readings to choose from. It makes me long for earlier times and simpler schemes, much as I rejoice at the variety of scripture to reflect and preach on in the course of the year. Tolerance of so many choices speaks of committees unable to agree a clear set of objectives for each learning event for given Sundays of the year. The power politics of old fashioned churchmanship seems to be there somewhere in the background, plus we also have to cope with more Sundays designated as days of prayer showcasing special church social and missionary concerns. 

Do we need all this as a given of arranging liturgy? Are our ecclesial overlords experimenting with a 'Let the market decide' long term strategy? Given that next Sunday could be observed as Reformation Sunday, given that Tuesday is the 500th anniversary of Luther's 95 Theses, perhaps it  isn't such a bad time to ask the question. We've had forty years of liturgical enrichment on top of earlier reforms, so the basic regular diet of worship is now more complex than it need be, just as it was in pre-reformation times, occasioning radical revision and creative innovation. 

After church, I drove back, making a deviation to discover the town of Huercal Overa, in the sierras to the east of the A7 autovia, near the provincial border with Murcia. It's a town that sprawls over a plateau overlooking the Almanzora valley, having outgrown its ancient centre. I didn't find much there to encourage me to explore in detail, so I was soon heading back to Mojácar for lunch.

Later in the afternoon, I drove over to Villaricos, and discovered a large lake situated to the north and west of the watercourse of the rio Almanzora. Back in history, this might have been an ox-bow lake, but there is what looks like a 25m high spoil heap offshore, suggesting that in times past it had been quarried for gravel. But no longer. The westernmost end is elevated, and water gives way to salt flats, with all the interesting wildlife this harbours. The shallower end to the east hosts a variety of aquatic wildfowl, ducks, herons and egrets, even a grey coloured flamingo, a fairly recent arrival following storms. Grey coloured, because the local ecosysten doesn't contain the tiny shrimps which form the flamingo staple diet, and afford the unique colouration of its plumage. I was there too early to see returning hosts of egrets returning to roost I was told of yesterday . The ones I snapped on lake islands were those with no need to commute to feed for whatever reason, I guess.

From there, I drove to Vera Playa, parked the car and walked a couple of kilometres along the beach to Laguna Pueblo, where the rio Almanzora becomes a somewhat larger charco than the one in Mojácar, where it reaches the sea, extending back a couple of kilometres inland, surrounded by tall reed beds full of watland birds of every kind. Another amazing place, not far from Mojácar! The sun was starting to set when I reached here, so there wasn't much time to explore. So glad to have discovered it, however. I will return.

   

Birding update

The usual Saturday routine today, finishing and printing my Sunday sermon, a walk to Mercadona for a few items of grocery, a walk up to the bridge over the charco to see if there any new birds are to be seen. There were three egrets visible again. I think this is a nuclear family which has settled here rather than wherever else these birds make a home in this region.

On the bridge tonight were a couple about my age toting big long lens DSLR cameras, espying the waters. Eventually we got around to chatting. They were birders visiting from the USA, following any local avian intel they could find on the internet. They told me about the salinas near Villaricos, the other side of Garrucha, which was the current major overnight roosting place for flocks of egrets I'd seen here this time last year. It's the site where others have told me flamingos can be seen. That tripmsounds like it;s worth the effort to make. It's only ten kilometres away. Maybe tomorrow, but not tonight. The clocks go back, and I'm determined to take advantage of this and get a really long night's rest.

   

St Agnes postponed

I went to St John's Canton this morning to offer a 10.30 Eucharist, relocated from its usual venue at St Luke's as the heating there is broken. There was a coffee morning going on at the other end of the church and nobody turned up to worship, so I prayed and read the Liturgy of the Word on my own, which I was quite happy to do. It's St Agnes Day today, but I'll be celebrating it tomorrow in any case.

Afterwards, Clare and I took advantage of another day of sunshine and went for a long walk around the park. I half recognised up to a dozen different kinds of birdsong, which was encouraging. I spotted a wren and a robin, and photographed a heron on the Bute Park river bank, and two large cormorants perched on different stones in the river, eyes fixed, like the heron on the water beneath them, hunting for fish, possibly salmon on the move to their spawning ground up-river. Strangely, yesterday, I heard and saw few birds apart from the ubiquitous crows, magpies and pigeons. Yet, the weather was the same as today. Getting to know the riverside parkland as wildlife habitat requires lots of walks and observation in the same locations time and time again, to build up a proper picture and understand it. It's nice to have much more time to look these days.

The rest of the day was uneventful and the evening spent watching the rubbish TV. The only thing of interest I found to read was an article about how groups of academics and computer geeks in the USA have been working around to clock to download and archive the content of American government Environmental protection agency data, before the new President takes office, suspecting that he will act to suppress volumes of published scientific data which confirms climate change. Trump is a declared denier and skeptic, who looks set to relegate climate change action to the bottom of his priority list. In other tech news, on his first day in office with executive power, the tech media are already reporting that US government web information on environmental and climate issues is no longer accessible. This is a worrying sign of dangerous times to come. If the truth is meant to set us free, suppressing the truth is surely meant to enslave us. But, as Trump sows, so will he reap. Suppress the facts and they could well return and cause your fall eventually.

      

Ornithology surprises

In a mood of industriousness this morning, I wrote two sermons, one for the Aljambra Eucharist on Thursday, in honour of St Simon and St Jude (about whom precious little is known),  and another for All Saints' Sunday. While preparing the former, I discovered there's an ancient church at Maku in northern Iran, in the region where Iran meets both Armenia and Azerbaijan. It's possibly one of the world's oldest Christian sites where the apostles are said to have been buried, martyred nearby, after evangelising in Armenia and Iran. Under islamic rule today, the church is said to be only accessible to pilgrims on their festival, one day a year, rating this as the world's most inaccessible Christian places of pilgrimage.

After lunch I had a phone call to tell me this this Sunday, it'll be Bible Sunday readings at the Mojacar Eucharist, and not All Saints. It didn't take me long to re-edit last Sunday's effort for Llanos, so now I am a week ahead! What shall I do with myself? There are no weekday services here next week - so far, but it was possible there could be another funeral, after all. I quite enjoy being in a position to pick up on anything that comes my way. It keeps me on my toes. It does my mind good. Heaven help me if I ever run out of things to do!

Later in the afternoon, I made myself go out for a walk. The weather is warm, but overcast, just like Cardiff, except that the clouds are a bit higher. Blue sky is such an incentive to get outdoors, a day like this is a temptation to turn in on myself. Anyway, I decided to explore the road on the north side of the Rio Aguas nature reserve. On the way over the bridge I got some good shots of a moorhen and a reed warbler, one of several pairs active in the reed beds, expressing itself occasionally with a noticeably loud distinctive call. Several pairs of moorhens were there before, but I'd not identified them, but confused them with the gallinules that are also present. There's this tiny diving duck with scruffy plumage. It might be an immature something, though what, I can't begin to think. Earlier I identified it as a teal, but now I'm less than sure. Its behaviour rules out it being a coot or a moorhen. For now it's a mystery bird.

The walk up the un-metalled road took me was the end of the golf course which is part of a golfing resort occupying land between Mojacar and Garrucha. I've walked around sections of it before, but have never seen anyone playing a round, and just one person on the driving range. The weather is great right now for a round of golf, so why is the place deserted? I wonder. 

After tarmac ran out, I followed the un-metalled track for another kilometre, as far as the cement works, and then crossed the dry river bed for the return leg. The entire length of the arroyo, both the section where there's water, and where the watercourse is underground, is rich with a variety of small birds, very hard to identify. At one point a flock of several dozen took to the wing at the same time. The energetic sound of the birds taking off surprised me. I would have needed the camera to be on, and set to video record to capture what I saw. 

It wasn't a flock of sparrows, the sight of which I am used to, but of even smaller birds, whose flight pattern was both erratic and distinctive, the entire group flew in patterns to avoid and confuse predators in a way I don't recall seeing before. I wonder how many more time I'd have to return to their territory to see that again.

So glad I made the effort to get out of the house for an hour or so.

   

Dawn delight

I woke at first light, aware that Clare would soon be on her way to the Heath hospital for day surgery eye appointment, thankfully with support from a good neighbour, with me so far away, and only able to message her good wishes. I couldn't get back to sleep, so with a little effort, I got up, dressed and made my way to the road bridge overlooking the nearby Rio Aguas nature reserve, to watch the sunrise, and anything else that might happen.

It seemed that there were even more coots out in the open waters of the lake than I saw last night, dozens of them, dabbling, fighting, calling to each other. Then there were bats on their odd jagged flight paths just over the water, with occasional intrusions from more elegantly aerobatic swifts. The big surprise was fish 20cm long jumping clean out of the water, several times in a row. Also insect hunting I wondered. A spectacular morning twilight dance. 

There were several kinds of birdsong unfamiliar to me coming from tall grasses either side of the lake. I caught sight of a reticent Purple Gallinule browsing for food among waterside reeds, then a few egrets appeared, then a few more, then a lot more as the sun appeared over the horizon. At first, they attached themselves to reeds or nearby trees, and roots for a while. Then without warning, groups of them would take to the air and fly west inland up the valley, to wherever they expected to find their next food. At a guess, there were several hundred birds hiding overnight in the surrounding reed beds. 

At this time of year reeds produce a white cotton like puffball on the stem. I think it may contain seed. At a distance in the half light, there could be no better hiding place for the egrets. Although larger than the puffball, they are equally as plain and white, clinging to a reed.

Just as I was about to leave, I spotted a group of six Mallards, and then tiny diving duck, probably a teal. I took a burred photo of this, plus a few more of Purple Gallinules feeding, and then, too quickly for me to react, the vivid blue flash of a Kingfisher, flying under the bridge, the length of the lake. Such a blessed morning hour. You can find my photos here

After breakfast I spent the rest of the morning editing and uploading photos, receiving and sending emails. I was ready for a siesta after lunch, but made the effort to walk later in the afternoon. This time I went south along the promenade, further than I went before, until I'd done 6-7 km or so. I was looking for a shop, well most probably a Chinese supermarket, selling cheap sun hats, as I'd left mine at home. I got lucky just as I was about to turn for home, and purchased a white sombrero, for 5€ a bit too small for my big head - it'll need stretching - but it's necessary. I've got used to wearing a hat this past few years, and even though the sun is less strong than it was last month, I won't risk over-exposure.

The south end of the promenade seems from its buildings to be the older part of Mojacar Playa, with many more smaller shops, restaurants and a few houses on the beach side of the road, and generally not looking as neat and tidy or as up-market as the northern reaches of the town. Around the junction of the road up to Mojacar's pueblo viejo is the most developed, with a shopping mall, some gardens, the Post Office, and some posh shops and bars. So, development seems to have extended a good 4km from the 'centre' to the north over the past few decades. Eventually, I guess, the entire sea front from Mojacar to the neighbouring mineral exporting port of Garrucha will be a built up area, but hopefully developed according to the same coherent planning concept that has made the north reaches of Mojacar Playa fairly pleasing to the eye.

Walking the streets this past few days, I've heard as much French spoken among holidaymakers as English. What I find puzzling is the large number of Italian themed eating houses, offering pasta or pizza. Few unashamedly English, French or Spanish for that matter, unless this exists as a default but isn't promoted. The built environment and landscape says 'Spain', but the cuisine less evidently so. I wonder what's the reason for this?

  

The personal touch

We took Ann to her train this morning. She's off to see friends for the weekend before returning to Kirton. Clare's niece and god-daughter Caroline flies in from South Africa tomorrow, and we will rendezvous with her at Magor service station on the M4, so that Clare and drive with her down to Exeter to visit Auntie Daphne in hospital still recovering from her recent stroke. So this means I'll have an unexpected solitary night to myself.

This afternoon I went to the office again for a couple of hours, braving the security cordon and the crowds of parents with small children in the lobby, invading the Disney Word exhibition to reach the relative calm of the top floor. It's been great to see the difference made by Ian, our Business Crime Reduction Manager since he started work four months ago. The fact that he has a long experience of working in the city as a policeman and security consultant means that he's well known, respected and influential. Quietly, he's improved our working relationship with licensed premises users in a way we've found difficult to sustain, and that counts for a lot.

We struggled on without a public relations or marketing officer to help make known what RadioNet and the BCRP is all about, and endured some setbacks in the process. Having someone who is known and knows people is much more of an asset when it comes to good public security, as so much is built on personal trust. Funding the post has been well worth all the effort we've put into it. Ashley and I met up for convenience again at the Louie today, to continue what we started yesterday. He told me that the Uber taxi service is set to start in Cardiff today. I realised that I don't know much about it. Normally my pensioners' free bus pass is all I need.

This evening I started work on inspecting and editing my latest batch of 350 photos taken in Sta Pola. Some of the bird pictures will need weeding out of the collection as they are not as good as I'd hoped for, many being taken at the full extent of telescopic range for both cameras. Using a tripod as many bird watching photographers do would lead to some improvement, but carrying even a small lightweight one, such as I have, is an unwelcome encumbrance to mobility. Still it's nice to look at them and remember a warmer place to be than Cardiff.