During the Christmas holidays I was able to visit some of the wetlands at the North Greece. Since then, I was so busy that I didn’t have the time to write something about them. In the next days I will try to write something for most of these visits since I had so much fun and I got so many nice pictures. In fact I made so many images that I haven’t seen all of them yet.
The first place that I visited was the Gallikos and Axios estuaries just outside the city of Thessaloniki. I only had a few hours but the place knows how to reward all visitors and especially nature photographers with nice pictures.
I didn’t have much time to visit all the known places or to search and find rare bird species. Perhaps the only rare species I saw was a group of Dalmatian Pelicans, but in Greece this is a common sight in many wetlands at the North of the country during Winter.
I was surprised to find so many Flamingos there and this was also the case in many other northern wetlands I visited. Every common wader species was also there in small numbers. Redshanks, Green, Wood and Common Sandpipers, Greenshanks, Little Stints, Grey Plovers, Curlews, Pied Avocets and many more. They were all there.
There were very few ducks with the Common Shelduck being the most common species at least at the spots that I have visited. I had the chance to make nice images of a group of three Oystercatchers. It was the first time that I managed to get so close to them. A group of Great Crested Grebes was fishing into the sea just in front of the Gallikos River estuaries and I did manage to get some nice pictures of them. Unfortunately a large group of Red-breasted Mergansers choose to stay away from the shore.
The day was over before I had the time to realize it. I had to leave the place at noon and by then my opinion that Gallikos and Axios River estuaries are one of the best wetlands of Greece for nature photographers, was once more justified. I hope to visit the place again soon.
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