Mediterranean November

 

Torrenostra

Dead Aleppo Pines

Lots of dead Aleppo Pines in 2024. This photo is from Sagunto, near Valencia.

Swathes of this white member of the cabbage family across the Valencian plains.

Another plant in the cabbage family, not much smaller overall but with relatively tiny yellow flowers.

On the same theme, the large leaves and small flowers of Mediterranean Stork's-bill, Erodium malacoides. 

A mud cliff at Villajoyosa. We saw a pair of Black Wheatears here (Oenanthe leucura).

Peter Jones' fascinating article about them:

https://www.andaluciabirdsociety.org/article-library/the-black-wheatear-oenanthe-leucura-leucura/

We're a bit later in the Med than usual. So I never caught the dramatic blooming of Cape Honeysuckle before. 

Books I read or acquired during our trip. Most of them I've only dipped into.

Contes per a tot l'any is a Catalan children's book (Stories for all the year round). The only thing I've taken in is the intriguing way of differentiating certain double-L type words, e.g. il·lustració, col·lecció ...

I had to download the Catalan keyboard to my phone to type that. 

I did read Balzac’s great novella Le Colonel Chabert in its original language; generally his French is too difficult for me. 

But I came across Stendhal's short stories in Spanish translation. This was on top of a hill on the edge of Aranjuez. 

Also in Spanish, the 1950 noir thriller Portrait in Smoke by the US author Bill S. Ballinger. I have the impression he's now better known here than in the English-speaking world. At any rate, his Spanish Wikipedia entry is much more detailed.