Birding app discovery

My home-bound travel arrangements are all now fixed. Tony is ferrying my to the Hostal Pensimar in El Altet on Monday afternoon, a short taxi ride from Alicante Airport, and an 08.30 check-in. It gives a cheap, clean, quiet, bed for the night, with shops and restaurants a few minutes walk away for an evening meal. All I need, before facing up to the British cold and damp.

Before lunch yesterday, I visited the bridge over the charco, and saw that there a few more egrets were roosting along the banks. From a family of three over the past months, the number has grown to ten. The pair of Dabs and their growing chick were out together, and I narrowly missed getting a photo of all three in the same place at the same time. They move quickly and are so busy diving for food, even the chick and more so as it develops. No wonder the little nuclear family is hard to snap. 

The visiting cormorant with a white front is still there, but on its own. If it was a breeding female, it would normally be with other females. I believe it's too well developed and too large for a juvenile that can also have a white front. So what is it? 

Among the countless warblers and handful of white wagtails seen daily darting in an out of the cane forest along the banks, I got a good photo a bird directly below me, paused on a patch of reed. I took it for a white wagtail, until I looked at the resulting photo. Another puzzle, as the colouring is not the same, and the tail longer and broader, with a black stripe near the tip. Again, what is it? 

I hunted for help with identification online, and found the excellent Ornithopaedia Europe Android app. It's a huge database of over a thousand bird species which can be searched by country, and presumed bird name in over thirty languages, with photos and bird-song samples. I remember this time last year meeting a Spanish visitor on the bridge and attempting to chat with him in Spanish, trying to identify a bird across the language barrier. He had this app on his iPhone, and I didn't bother to check if there was an Android equivalent. How foolish of me. It's free to download as well. Such a public spirited offering of high quality data, and no intrusive advertising either.

Anyway, the Spanish app selection showed me the possibility that the mystery Cormorant could be the White Breasted variant. When breeding is done, Cormorants tend to want their own space, like Herons, not like little Egrets which often hang out together and travel in family groups. Mallard couples are often seen together, and with their chicks. Multitudes of Coots inhabit the same space, and seem to spend a lot of time noisily aggressing each other. So many behavioural differences, just like humans.

The other discovery from the app was that my other distinctive mystery bird is a grey wagtail. Glad to have that sorted. I can see this piece of software is going to come in very handy in future.

Flight diverted, communications disaster

When I went out for a breath of fresh air before going to bed early, the sky was crystal clear and the Supermoon high in the sky. Not such an interesting photo to be taken, but in any case I took one, framed by the Hostal Pensimar sign. It took a while to find the best position in which the camera's auto settings wouldn't be totally confused by the street lights. It's not wonderful, but better than nothing as a memento of my overnight stay. 

I slept until five, and the noises of plumbing working told me other travellers were on the move, so I got up, ate breakfast, then switched off my alarm and packed. My taxi arrived on time, and five minutes, later I entered the departure hall of Alicante-Elche (or if you prefer Valenciano, Alacant-Elx). El Altet is situated just south east of the runway end. It must be noisy in high season, but so convenient.

The airport was still relatively quiet, a quarter of an hour later I was in the departure lounge with an hour and a half to wait before boarding, with a cafe solo grande and my remaining travel sandwiches with nothing more to do than watch the sky lighten and the sun to rise.

We flew north along the coast through clear skies, and I caught a glimpse of the Ebro delta, which was less than easy to recognise as the angle of the early sun didn't illuminate the watery surfaces of the many salinas, and rice fields, after harvesting are endlessly brown, intersected at odd angles by roads and water conduits. Happy memories nevertheless. There was fresh snow on the eastern Pyrenees giving the mountains dramatic definition in the early light. On the north side, we entered cloud, obscuring the ground below and partly the sky above, even at a high cruising altitude. The next glimpse of land we had was through the clouds as we circled Bridgend waiting for clearance to land.

The pilot had warned us half way that diversion to Birmingham International might be necessary unless there was a break in the weather around Rhoose, clouds and rain down to the ground apparently. In the end, we flew north east to Warwickshire, where at least cloud was a few hundred metres above the runway, and landed safely. We were bussed into the terminal, and collected luggage. In the meanwhile I'd received an email from Vueling to stay the 'plane had been diverted to another airport and to visit the enquiry desk to find out about repatriation to Cardiff. The email identified the flight, but not the airport arrived at. It didn't identify by name which information desk one was to seek, out of many, nor where passengers might be expected to wait for transport.

The outcome of this was bewilderment for 150+ passengers, who stood with their luggage outside the main entrance blocking the entrance for others arriving and departing. By now it was midday. A few passengers who knew an insider in the airline business 'phoned a friend' to find out what had happened and what would happen next. No airport official appeared to manage the crowd and tell us where to gather and stay. I heard there had been a tannoy announcement about buses coming for us, but didn't hear anything myself, and there was no information displayed on any digital screen I was aware of. 

Then it started to rain lightly, driving some people back into the entrance lobby, and others across the road to bus shelters. Thankfully the first of three coaches turned up just after one o'clock. A resourceful passenger hearing the name of the bus company had called them and got confirmation they'd set out and their ETA. Nothing from airport management. 

While we were boarding, a man and a woman wearing hi-viz jackets bearing the Swissport logo put in an appearance to ensure everyone found a place on a bus. What happened to the two disabled travellers who may not have been able to get up into a coach, I never found out. Swissport is the company that manages all kinds of passengers services for airlines in both Cardiff and Birmingham, maybe other airports, I don't know. My previous experience of them at work has been very positive, so it's hard to know what happened to break the necessary information from from the airlines and airports in question to passengers on the receiving end. 

Technologies are clearly in place which are up to the job, if an email came to my phone as soon as I got off the 'plane. It simply didn't contain enough precise and relevant information to be helpful. And in the end that's down to people managing the system not thinking hard enough about how to deploy their latest comms toys. The transport logistics people were clearly on the ball, for buses to arrive just three hours after the flight had been diverted. I believe they were from a Welsh company and assume that outbound passengers stranded in Cardiff were taken to Birmingham to catch their flight, but maybe by a separate fleet of buses, given that loading passengers would have added another hour to the delay. 

We arrived back at Cardiff International just after five, a two and a half hour trip. Our driver was not so familiar with the airport trip, and missed a turning at one roundabout and needed redirection by vigilant passengers upfront, but it was all very good humoured. I was seated in front of an older couple and overheard snatches of conversation and comments during the journey which took me right back into childhood, as the accent, intonation and turns of phrase used were specific to the district of the Valleys in which I was brought up. I could have been on a bus outing sixty years ago instead of today.

I arrived home at six, glad to have been able to alert Clare about the change of circumstances which meant I couldn't take her to an appointment, or drive her to choir practice, so she was able ot make other arrangements. She wasn't home, but that gave me time to unpack completely and tidy my things away beforehand, and enjoy the welcome home lunch she'd prepared and kept for me, six hours ago.

It wasn't quite the homecoming I'd expected, and as the delays were fairly inconsequential in our case, there was little to worry about, but lots to reflect on. All the best resources were in place, but their use thwarted by the breakdown of the information flow. Human error, perhaps one missed phone call, a key person out of the office, an element of a contingency plan not discussed, and crisis management of any complex situation can unravel. All those bewildered passengers standing around with baggage in the entrance area unsupervised, like sheep without a shepherd, could have been a scenario for an accident, a security incident, or for an opportunist criminal to do their worst. I hope my recourse to Twitter with complaint and comment about this affair will contribute to a review of contingency planning on the part of all those involved in the chain of communication.

Leaving Mojacar.

I thought yesterday was busy,but today was busier still. I stayed up late writing and got up late. Then this morning, there was my case to pack, the bed linen and towels to consign to the laundry basket, travel food to put in a bag, rubbish to take to the bin, the kitchen to clean.

There was more writing to do as well, as a handover report for the next locum, and this took me a lot longer than expected. I felt it was important to ensure the wi-fi password was embedded in the report, as I'd been unable to find it, as can be the case, on these assignments, found scribbled on a post-it note on the desk, or in the vicinity of the router. So far in Spain, with rare exception, I needed to look for the wi-fi password on the device itself. It's written in such small print that a magnifying glass is needed. So I take a photo of the identifying label on the underside of the router, and blow it up to read from when identifying each device I log on.

One virtue of BT and TalkTalk wireless internet is that they provide this info in larger print, on a card and with the 'howto' information. Some routers used in Spain have an extra button to push to broadcast the password briefly so wireless devices can pick it up, as in the UK, but not all. Such 'magic' solutions are not good news in the realm of good security, as you don't know what suspicious person or system is sniffing for access. So why Spanish internet service providers seem to relish making it difficult, I don't know, as it's of no benefit to the user.

Anyway, the morning sped by, and my last cooked lunch was rather a rush. I got out of the house on time, then went back because I worried about having left the balcony door unlocked (it wasn't), then I headed for Pam and Alwyn's house outside Vera for the journey to Alicante airport, and was only five minutes late by my timetable, or twenty five minutes early as they were expecting me at two and were still having lunch. It meant that I could enjoy a cup of coffee before we headed north in good weather. The journey passes through some spectacularly beautiful terrain. I didn't take photos for once, as the cameras were packed away in the boot. All I had to do was relax and let myself be driven, and in good company. How lovely.

Booking dot com led to an inexpensive room for one at Hostal Pensimar in El Altet, a well appointed and modern stopover place for the airport. I bade farewell to Pam and Alwyn just after four, happy to know they would be back in Vera before dark. Now with tomorrow's taxi booked for six thirty, all I have to do is relax some more, sleep and wait until the check-in counter makes its sleepy start.

No rising Supermoon for me tonight. On the way here we drove into cloudy weather, and it rained for a while on the airport approach motorway. Early bed for me I think.