What a first peek outside our window!
And there’s the sun! [Forty-four minutes later, but who’s counting??!!]
Off on our adventures, aha, there’s the first castle we’ve spotted, waaaay up high.
We enjoyed the last few meters before reaching an Iron Age village, along with munching cattle. [For the amount of dairy and pork we see on the table, we see remarkably few of those critters in the countryside.]
And there’s the settlement…with working archaeologists! Actually, looking at recent maps, that is the highest settlement area; more is “behind” us/me. But what’s exposed is ahead….
This rather large room produced multiple Greek and greek-style artifacts, including large ceramic vessels. This settlement was well-connected with Mediterranean coastal trading ports, undoubtedly Empúries, 12 miles away as the crow flies, so a day’s walk if you were in good shape and the path wasn’t muddy.
This area was built later, and some houses had even larger rooms.
Next stop: Lake Banyoles, the largest lake in Catalunya, and long renowned for its fishing.
Cormorants look like cormorants.
Early 20th C fishing (and bathing) “hut”—there’s more than a dozen spaced along this stretch of the shore.
However, people fished Lake Bangles even in the Neolithic. This hole is a below-the-water-level excavation that has now re-flooded. The water kept organic artifacts from rotting away, preserving wood, basketry, bones, seeds, and textile matter that’s usually totally absent. Archaeologists also found the remains of buildings, including structures on pilings.
Today’s Roman site is a farm called Vilauba. It began as a U-shaped building from the 1st–3rd C AD. Later, more rooms were added through the Visigothic period. This was the location of the press (represented by that interior rectangle of stone), probably for olives (I should have read the signs more closely, but: Catalan).
Speaking of Catalan, this room was a “rebost”, meaning pantry. The raft of pottery containers found here kept various foodstuffs and items (relatively) safe from critters and insects.
Back at our hotel, I took the trail down down down…
…to the beach. It’s pretty much high tide, I think.
Back up at the hotel, I spotted a gull taking a bath in the (closed for the season) pool. I shot a series of photos and discovered it turned its head to the right every time it ducked (is that term okay?) under. Here it’s fluffing its wings and tail.
Posted at 12:37 PM |
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It was still pretty dark this morning when this critter trundled purposefully past the back door and around the house, zoom: gone. I thought: “Silver Streak” and chuckled har har har.
Posted at 8:22 PM |
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When I was first walking on the beach this morning, this bunch took off and looped around and around, finally returning to this same spot. Feeding? Also, I don’t know what they are…white like gulls, but smaller.
In lieu of the many dawn shots I’ve been posting, here’s a just-after shot…as in just after moonrise and just after sunset. It’s a super-wide angle image, not a pano…obviously, the sun set further to the “right” relative to this framing.
Posted at 8:34 PM |
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I learned that the world’s longest lived vertebrate is the Greenland shark, Somniosus microcephalus. They can reach at least 400 years, and perhaps 500—that’s half a millennium! The latest research (thank you NYTimes Tuesday Science stories), discussed by Jonathan Moens, has discovered that this species has huge genomes, with about 6.5 billion DNA base pairs (humans have less than half that). This makes these sharks more genetically resilient (read the story for the details), and thus likely contributes to their longevity.
Still reeling about the (possibly) 500 year lifespans.
Posted at 9:40 PM |
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I spotted many of these webs today…this one’s inhabitant is left of center and fully in residence.
Posted at 9:08 PM |
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Our fawn visitors came by twice, with totally crepuscular timing: 6:30am and 6:30pm. This was the morning visit.
It seems like a quarter of the garage at the neighbors’ is for storing shoes. 🤣
I took a late-day walk and the light angle lined up with the creek that leads from the road into the swamp/lake.
Posted at 8:32 PM |
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This doe has been coming by daily. Today, she came by twice—that we noticed.
This is one of her fawns. No photo of the second. White-tails are crepuscular, I have heard, but this group drifts by in the early and later afternoon.
Both are standing; that is how tall the grass is this year. Also, both photos are through a window with a screen.
Posted at 9:03 PM |
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I didn’t see much in the way of wildlife today. I did see two garter snakes. Also, multiple flickers. And the usual deer, plus geese on the lake. I heard night-time loon calls and multiple sandhill cranes above.
Posted at 9:18 PM |
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Oh, and another fatality in the lake in the food web shifts accompanying the zebra mussel infestation—no live clams, only clam shells. The mussels cluster on the clams, and pfft, the clams don’t survive.
Posted at 9:56 PM |
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This is a late post because the server was down when I began to write. Happily, it’s up Saturday morning.
Yesterday we saw a doe with a wee spotted fawn, no more than a very few days old. We spotted them walking down the mowed lane between trees in the orchard. She stopped to browse and for Little One to nurse. Soon, she moved on, and stepped into the tall grass, far taller than LO. LO preferred to stay in the mowed lane. Drama ensued. Eventually, she enticed LO into the tall grass with another feeding opportunity. Then, the doe moved on, and…repeat.
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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