Things to remember:
- It was an unexpectedly misty start this morning. I got up at my usual 6.00am to scan the area with my bins but had to content myself with eating breakfast in a pea-souper instead.
- As I was amongst prime territory for the rare and elusive little bustard, I spent most of the morning shuffling roughly westward down quiet tracks, stopping, and seeing what I could see. No little bustards (they're notoriously hard) but I did get three fantastic sightings of Barbary partridge plus zillions of bee-eaters, hoopoes et al, so plenty of endorphins were dumped. A bit of an oddity also showed up in the form of a little owl that was casually perched on an electricity wire and - as they do - was watching me, watching it.
- As part of the shuffle-and-stop I also took in a pleasant and quite unusual church. As with many such things hereabouts, Catholicism features heavily and an information board revealed the place had a great deal of pomp and circumstance attached in a saintly and self-important kind of way. In spite of the theological dramatisations, I appreciated its slightly unusual form (pic) and betrayal of all it had witnessed.
- Took on diesel at €1.98/l.
- By lunch I'd bumbled to the low-lying wetlands of the west coast; and so began the suffering. It was outrageously hot, humid and exposed. I discovered that there is nothing at all in the way of information or formalised access to the various canals, rivers, swamps, ponds, lakes and brackish lagoons that make up the area. It's pretty much a case of get to where you can, how you can, and see if you can survive the heat, humidity, and millions of biting insects. They certainly don't make it easy for nature-watchers in Sardinia.
- I (or rather the L200) took on some pretty gnarly tracks and heavily encroaching vegetation, but we did get to five or six points where reasonable viewing of the various habitats of interest was possible.
- Drenched in sweat and hammered by midges and mosquitoes I was, at least rewarded with a good species list. Of the more notables were: black-winged stilts, purple heron, sandwich tern, grey plover, spoonbills, purple gallinule, and hundreds of flamingos. Importantly, I also scored three new-to-me species in the form of little tern, slender-billed gull, and gull-billed tern.
- Post purgatory I found a bit of shade and after several cups of re-hydrating tea I had a spin out on the bike down gravel tracks. During the spin out I put up not one, but two stone curlews (separately). After trying hard to see them since I was a kid, I'm now seemingly having difficult not finding them!
- Meandering from my shade to my intended overnighting spot I also saw another whip snake. It was another big one of at least a metre.
- The (non-biting) insect life is full-on in this wetland area. Butterflies are varied and everywhere. I also had a notable close-up encounter with a great golden digger wasp, who noisily carried her paralysed prey back to a pre-dug hole, took it underground and then buried it and left it to its grizzly fate.
Post composed at 22:40 on Tuesday 2nd June from my intended overnighting spot N 39.98129°, E 08.47323° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:39.98129%2C08.47323
