A flying visitor from Africa...

We were outside this afternoon working on some wiring when this fellow appeared on the gate.....made me near on jump out of my skin!!!  Not that he would do any harm to us, but just his size and the fact that he wasn't bothered in the least by us working and moving about next to him.  He even hung about whilst I went inside for my camera and the ruler, so that we could show his size....he was quite a whopper!  I wish I'd had my macro lens but it's at home!!!

We get quite a few of these around about in summer and hear them all year round but I think this one has probably popped up from Africa for a visit....I think he is a Dessert Locust....maybe he has friends here in Spain and is going to be spending Christmas with them ;)

When I saw this photo, I just had to embellish it a little, it's the pose.........

Putting on my top hat.....

And this one.....well, enough said!!!

And the rain, rain, rain....

...came down, down, down,
In rushing, rising, riv'lets
Til the river crept out of it's bed
And crept right into Piglets....

Well thankfully it wasn't quite as bad as that, we never had rain (or piglets) in our bed, but my goodness the weather has been awful over the last few days!  It started off so well at the beginning of the week with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday being delightful, and warm enough for me to sew outside on the deck....but come Wednesday night, well "Oh what a change in the weather..." springs to mind!

The rain and thunderstorms were frightening in their intensity, the dry river bed behind us became a raging river, rushing past carrying everything with it as it hurtled towards the Mediterranean sea, flowing frantically through the culvert under the road!!!!  There, it crashed headlong into the massive waves, and between them deposting branches and other debris on it's way, across the beach.

In the meantime, we had lakes forming all around us and the puddles were ankle deep!!!!  Neighbours were frantically trying to sweep the water towards the road before it came in under their doors....old Spanish residences are just not designed to cope with heavy rain!  And to top it all off, we then had hail stones as big as marbles!!!!

Here I was on Tuesday, sewing in the sunshine to my hearts content...the temperature was 25C!

And this was two days later!!!  Temperature dropped to about 18C...brrrrrrr! 

In the top right hand corner of the photo below, you can see what appears to be a 'lake'...it is!!!!

I think the blue tinge below, is my top is reflecting on the window as I tried to photograph the hail stones....I didn't want to venture out with my camera in such awful weather!!! 

The sky looks pretty 'angry' during the brief break in the rain!

 Although the photo below looks like just mud, it is in fact the water rushing along in the what is usually a dry river bed!!  To give you an idea, the river bed is about 8 feet below the surface of the water!  In the background, what looks like another body of water, is in fact the road!

The churned up water, taking everything with it....I actually saw a childs plastic scooter rush past on it's journey to the sea! 

And finally, a write up in the local paper!!

Sur newspaper report!

So as you can see, the rain in Spain DOESN'T always stay mainly in the plain! :)

Hope everyone has a great weekend and a good start to December!!

Trying out my zoom lens....

I got a super new zoom lens for Christmas but until now haven't really had a good opportunity to use it.  However, we are at the coast for a little while and I thought I'd try it out down here.  I've always tried to get good photos of the mountains to the back of us but with my other lenses have been unable to get a really good 'close-up' but this morning I got a couple of better ones!  You can clearly see that there is a bit of snow on the top, but not as much as this time last year!  The mountain is called La Maroma and is actually the highest peak of the mountain range called the Sierra de Tejeda ,reaching to 2066 m, (6,778 ft). 

And here are some other photos that I took this morning.  The first shows an extremely rare sight for some people, particularly my friends in the UK, who've not seen it in a while, it is called the Sun!  So as not to shock you I've only let it be seen filtered through the leaves of a eucalyptus tree!  (Sorry, couldn't resist that one!)

And here are some photos of the local parrots, they're very lively at the moment (actually they are always very lively!) and I noticed two of them were getting very 'fruity' whilst I watched them.....obviously realised that today was St Valentines Day!!!! 

These parrots are, as far as I'm aware, one of only two types of parrot species that are 'natural' to Europe, 'natural' in that they were first introduced 'by accident' more than 100 years ago and have stayed!  I guess they must have liked the temperature here on the coast!!  People seem to just refer to them as Green Parrots, but they are in fact Monks Parakeets, also known as the Quaker Parrot, (Myiopsitta monachus).  The other species seen locally are the Rose-Ringed Parakeet.  Some people complain that they're noisy and are a nuisance,  but I have to say that I love them, I think it's just wonderful to see flocks of them flying above our heads, a mass of green feathers....and quite honestly, what is a bit of parrot poop on the washing now and again!!! 

This is about the closest 'close-up' I could get with my lens, the bird is probably more than 40 feet up the tree (I'm no good with estimating distances but these are pretty tall trees!)  Look at his lovely soft looking tummy!

This is to give you an idea of how big their nests are, they seem to all live together in large colonies.

This last photo isn't mine but I thought I'd show you how beautiful these little parrots look in flight!!