Today was always going to be Flamingo Day. We were weighing up whether to cycle to the lagoon where the flamingoes are supposed to breed and gather in large numbers (14km each way) or whether to go to the Pont de Gau reserve (4km each way). The Pont de gau reserve won, and we pootled down the road to find it.
Even before we’d finished the bike ride there, we knew we were in for a treat, with flamingoes coming in to land every few minutes, egrets at every turn and all sorts of tweeting and flapping going on.
The reserve costs €7.50 to get in, and it’s worth every penny. There’s a bit of a sensory overload within the first few minutes as there are so many birds to look at in every direction…herons, egrets (little and cattle), flamingoes, terns…all within the first five minutes.
It’s all very discrete so after the initial section of the reserve, you barely know that you’re on a reserve at all. You can walk the long or the short route around the lagoons, reed beds and waterways. The long version is 7.5km and that’s the one we went for…it goes much further off the beaten track, but we were rewarded with a spoonbill sighting, as well as a whole batch of cattle egrets and other birdy delights.
Some of the photos I’ve included aren’t the best quality – taking photos of birds proved harder than it might seem!
Yes, that really is a beaver swimming past the flamingoes...
Yikes, there's a beaver! Run away, run away!
And, as if that wasn’t enough…just as we arrived back at the campsite, two hoopoes flew past in front of us. If you’re not a birdy person, or you don’t know what a hoopoe is…go and google them, they’re amazing. No photos as yet, but we’re hopeful for tomorrow, as we’ve seen them again in the same place an hour or two later…
