Mid April 2013
On weekends I sometimes go over to Karystos (on the Island of Euboea). My son and my partner join me-we take a drive over to Paximada to walk in the phrygana scrub along the shore; I sneak a peak at the wetland. The Karystos Plain Wetland. As people who know me well should know, this is the place I have studied as a youth - and it is very close to my heart. In winter and spring on good years large areas are flooded - wet meadows, open ephemeral pools, rushbeds, reedbeds and abandoned grazed feilds. Its an important wetland for birds and wildlife in general. But nobody would ever support any attempt to save it - its on private land. The private land owners and the public in general would never concieve of setting up a protected area - even a thin strip of greenspace. Some of the photos below even show some new unfinished buildings in the wetland. These were intentionally built to try to "stop" any conservation efforts there. So...this is really a "temporary wetland". (Sorry for being rather sarcastic in such a sacred conservation battleground).
On this Sunday drive it was soooooooooo windy - that you couldn't even hold up a camera. Anyway, these are some results:
- Two Glossy Ibises were about and aloud very close views;
- Most of the sandpipers where Wood Sandpipers; but the odd Ruff is also visible as are two Little-ringed plovers;
For me, and my impatient teen son - that's enough. My partner even picked a couple of Anamones for her mother. How sweet....
