It is now more than one month since my visit to lake Karla in central Greece near the city of Volos. The lake is in fact a water reserve which was created in recent years to irrigate the area. At the same place in the past there was one of the biggest wetlands in Greece. That was before it was drained to free more land for agriculture use.
The new lake has changed radically all the surrounding area and now the presence of wildlife is evident everywhere! The birds quickly rushed to take advantage of the new habitat created in a place that there were only dry fields before. Migration was over when we arrived. You could see birds feeding their young everywhere in and around the lake area. In addition we saw many young birds that had just left their nest e.g. many Rock Nuthatches, Northern Wheatears etc.
For the last migrants it was the time they were building their nests. This time we met many of these birds carrying nesting material. The White Stork in the first picture is a good example. The highlight of our visit was a pair of Olive-Tree Warblers we found building their nest. This bird species although breeds in Greece it is quite difficult to be found and even more difficult to take decent pictures of it, so I am quite pleased with the picture shown here despite the shadows and the not so clean background.
Don’t forget that you can always see the pictures in larger/sharper versions together with the Exif Data just by clicking on them.