Going for glory
We had toad-in-the-hole today. That roughly is how you translate the Portuguese word 'sapal' for marsh. Frogs too - croaking away in the ditches, hunted by egrets and storks. An absolute glory-hole here just south of Lisbon on the Rio Sado estuary.
Even the grandchildren Benjamin and Beatrice (pictured) eyeballed the avocets, spoonbills, marsh harriers, purple herons, black-winged stilts, great egrets. Well, these are all the big showy bits of business which fill your bins like the pictures in glossy magazines. And those too have found this lovely rare wetland.
The red and blue and green fishing boats that hunt for eels and flatfish for Lisbon's posh restaurants tie-up with their cargoes at one of the most bizarre and rickety walkways this side of Asia. The poles and paths look like an unfathomable game of spillikins. Digital cameras from Canada and Japan whirred even during our short visit. I have seen Sapal do Carrasqueiro two or three times now and the coruscation of colours and shapes give you Van Gogh fever.
Last week the women who work the nets and hooks were profiled glossily in 'how our country cousins live' type of journalism. They are brown, beefy girls with the wind in their hair. For me, the big attraction was the tiniest, slimmest little bird in the toad hole; one cited in the Ramsar and Special Protection Area as of critical importance here, the Kentish plover.
One zipped past me like a small white bat and perched on a boat. It is smaller than our Chichester Harbour ring plovers and more delicate. Sussex gunners 150 years ago, when it nested at Pagham and Selsey, called it the 'stone-runner', while men of Kent claimed the diminutive wader as their very own, hence the now universal name.
What did the gunners of Italy, France and even the far Caspian shores once call this water sprite? Or d'oeuvre, probably. Birders and planters like me, parachuted into such a world-class wetland tend to become boring to others quite soon, just as glorious game enthusiasts for me seem mentally challenged.
My eye-feasting continued with tasty trips of tiny treats like dunlin, common sandpipers, purple sandpipers while the children began to contemplate mobile messages for the older (he is 16 after all when there are other calls of nature) or the need for or d'oeuvres.
As my hard working son, whose home-grown vegetables in his Alentejo garden as much as his roles in the Coppelia ballet 90 miles north in Lisbon's Expo theatre had equally entertained me in the past few days, tried to balance the needs of all, I had to make rapid contact in the few minutes of this glorious day by the Sado sea.
When you realise that 90 species of plants live in the saltmarsh at and around East Head in Chichester Harbour you soon realise how rich seaward communities of plants are throughout the world. Super things
like purple and perennial glasswort (once used to make glass, or tickle the taste buds with butter on a plate), beard grass, small cord-grass (Spartina versicolor) golden samphire and wormwood with its sweet smell from the silvery leaves were quickly plotted into the little grey cells.
Great fen sedge, brown galingale and purple loosestrife spread another world at your feet that can excite the visual and nasal taste buds as charmingly as your favourite TV chef. All you need is a little practice: not much, say up to Grade Five on the piano or the ability to make a truly mouth-watering toad-in-the-hole. Now there is something I never achieved, nor plover pie I'm glad to say.
What do you think? Click here to send a letter or leave a comment below.
Click here to go back to Chichester news
Click here to go back to Bognor Regis news
Click here to go back to Midhurst and Petworth news
To tell us where in the world you are reading this story click on the link below to add yourself to our readers' map.
MAP
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Chichester
Monday 13 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 22 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 6 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: North west
