One hell of a bad day

A sudden thunderstorm and heavy rain poured upon the Northern region of Portugal. My dog spotted something moving on the ground and barked a couple times to get my attention to it. What he found was a young sparrow, completely soaked and wet and absolutely frightened by thunder. Apparently, it had chosen a bad day to come out of its nest and learn to fly. I just caught it, left it on the nearest tree and took a couple of pictures. I also noticed its parents clinging nearby, thus I felt that the rest of this story would be up to Nature’s own path. When I walked away, its parents returned, numerous times, with food and insisting that it flew away with them. It took a while for him to become active, but the young sparrow did manage to dry its feathers and fly away. And you were having a bad day, huh?

House sparrow; juvenil de pardal-comum - Passer domesticus L.

Vieira do Minho, Portugal
2017, May

Fecha de Barjas – a new perspective

The first publications I did for this blog were photographs taken from this location. Recently, I repeated the short trail to Fecha de Barjas waterfalls. Yet, I had few hopes of witnessing the full glory of River Arado, as Portugal has had the driest April of the last 90 years. Nonetheless, the river was there, scarce, but still flowing. The bottom half of this sequence of waterfalls is so dominant over the landscape that visitors (as I did before) tend to focus on the closest perspectives. This time, I focused on framing perspectives more afar.
The shepherd’s shelter, built on top of the cliff, exhibits both the hardship of older times but also how close traditional rural life was with the beauty of Nature. When Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Fallingwater house, already some Portuguese inhabitant of Gerês Mountains had done some similar.

Ermida, Terras de Bouro, Serra do Gerês, Portugal
2017, April

The guardian of my garden

I have built a couple of garden wooden boxes to grow some vegetables at home. Each time I water the garden, creatures run afar in seek of refuge and I’m able to witness far more life there than what I’ve actually planted. The most notorious one is this green huntsman spider that has become a local resident. In this moment, it took refuge in top of a full grown arugula leaf. I’ve nicknamed “the guardian”.

 Green huntsman spider; aranha-verde-de-huntsman - Micrommata virescens

Vieira do Minho, Portugal
2017, April

Standing tall among giants

A granny's nightcap - Aquilegia vulgaris stretches towards the scarce sunlight that penetrates the dense woods of Mata da Albergaria.

European columbine, granny's nightcap, aquilégia [PT]  - Aquilegia vulgaris

Terras de Bouro, Portugal
2017, April

Hello sunshine

The western mountains of Gerês shining with the rising Sun, while the deep valley of Cávado River still hanging in the twilight. Interestingly, while I was taking this photograph in a rather inhabited region of Gerês Mountain Range, I was also overlooking one of the most populated and well known touristic locations: the two bridges over Cávado River and the villages of Rio Caldo and Vilar da Veiga. This perspective also illustrates the balance between Nature and human population within the Peneda-Gerês National Park (PNPG).

Terras de Bouro, Portugal
2017, April