3 Feb 2009

26 Jan 1989 - Quails etc

There was a terrific thunderstorm overhead during the night and it rains hard on and off this morn­ing. We go with Sara (Peter's assistant) to Portimao for shopping; she shows us a pleas­ant indoor market. Vegetables and bread are a little more expensive here than in Setubal, but still very cheap by northern European standards. There seems to be better quality produce in market places, in small shops you just take pot luck with what they have, and they might have had it for a week or so. In the markets it all looks fresh and appetizing.

Two days ago Bella (Peter's dog) flushed a quail from the vineyard near the camper. Jim and Bella go through the crop again at lunchtime today and flush another; Peter thinks there are probab­ly one or two pairs to each vineyard here. There is a good population of red-legged partridge too, in the even­ings we often hear their 'chuffa chuffa chuffa' terri­torial calls.

This afternoon we go walking with Sara to look for plants in bloom. As she has been here only since last June many of the flowers were new to her too, and she takes notes from which to iden­tify them later. Wall brown, clouded yellow, green‑striped white and painted lady butterflies are all on the wing.

We stop in a field overlooking the east marsh, Jim has the telescope out and finds some stone-curlew standing out in the open. Their peculiar hunched posture, yellow bill and eye, and black lines on the coverts are all clea­rly visible. There seem to be several groups of four or five just standing around doing nothing much.

Small numbers of swallows pass by going north, then suddenly the sky is filled with house and crag martins apparently going south ‑ do they know something we don't? Later there was a com­pact flock of 40 ‑ 50 black‑headed gulls moving overhead, gliding in anticlockwise circles on a thermal as it drifts across the sky.

On the leaf of a white arum lily that I was trying to photograph, I find a small, long, narrow cricket ‑ it is well camou­flaged by standing along a vein on the leaf and I'm sure I would have missed it if I had not been peering through the camera viewfinder. From the grasshopper field guide we identify it as Phane­roptera nana.

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