Notes from Sunny Portugal (or ... suntanned musings from a middle-aged conservationist)

Posted by Northumberland Wildlife Trust on Jul 14, 11 08:30 AM in Bloggers

By Conservation Officer Kevin O'Hara

I stepped forth from the airport foyer to be greeted by over a dozen wheeling white storks directly overhead. What a sight; I was definitely in Portugal.

The sun was shining and on the way to the hotel, amidst the bouts of childish 'lads' humour I spotted numerous Mediterranean delights: hoopoes, a roller and several azure-winged magpies and a host of small birds.

In the evening and quieter periods I noticed some lost UK prizes. Towards the end of the day, the sky above the town was filled with the screams of thousands of swifts and trills of martins and swallows. Walking the streets, the archways and eaves of new and old buildings alike had scores of nests beneath and nobody was batting an eyelid!

Everywhere were 'spuggies' - your common or garden house sparrow, and the song of crickets and cicadas, the real song of the Med, a wonderful evening chorus of bird and insect life.

Thinking back I remember, my granny used to have hearth crickets in her terraced cottage's open hearth that would sing gently through the evenings. What else did we used to have around our homes? They were all here, in abundance too. Some slightly less welcome than others of course, like the many cockroaches cleaning the streets of abandoned junk food at night, but nevertheless, now still largely absent from our sterile living environs.

Peering over garden walls into secluded corners often brought a glimpse of a scurrying reptile, maybe a wall lizard or even, once, I saw a large snake, probably a Montpellier. None of which would be allowed within a hundred miles of our safe urban homes now but here in Portugal are tolerated as natural pest controllers.

Down on the golf courses and new apartments, they were going to extraordinary lengths to accommodate nesting white storks and a host of amphibians of all shapes and sizes. This view from someone who has worked in conservation for many years and dealt with developers' 'nightmares' in the UK was very refreshing but more ironic given Portugal's present economic plight; despite this, the key words here were, 'tolerance' and 'acceptance'.

As I alighted back in sunny (not!) Newcastle my phone informed me of an incident in Northumberland; where, hot on the heels of last week's report in this paper, an otter had actually been killed by dogs 'accidentally'.

As I drove from this airport, depressed by weather and news, the fields were not lifting with small brown birds, or multi-coloured ones for that matter; they were sterile agricultural spaces inhabited by nothing but pigeons and pheasants.

Somewhere, out there, we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and our priorities!

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