Posts

Showing posts from August, 2017

The sound of silence

Image
Bee-eater (John Hawkins) Returning to Extremadura after several weeks away and I am confronted by Lucifer, the name, I hasten to add, given to this year's Mediterranean blast-from-an-open-oven heatwave. Pleasure is found at dawn, when the air still feels fresh. I slowly walk on the plains, each footstep a crunch of brittle grass, as bundles of Calandra Larks twang across my view just a few feet from the ground. At the same height a male Montagu's Harrier is hunting, seeking signs of movement of possible prey in that narrow window of time before the heat pushes the rodents and small birds into cover. The subtly-changing hues of the landscape as the low sun rolls out have a transitional depth. In just a few hours, the light has flattened and we are left with a bicoloured impression: the remarkably uniform golden blond of the crisp dry herbaceous vegetation, set against the sombre green of the encina holm oaks of the dehesas . And above, an extraordinarily plain Dunnock egg-b