EGRETS and PELICANS
So continuing with a half-hearted attempt at imparting some info from my trip, the present day Lake Kerkini (made so by a large dam at Sidirokastro controlling the flow of water from the Strymon River) forms part of the wetland marshlands of the river's floodplain. In fact the Greek authorities are controlling the levels of the Lake so effectively, they've drowned half the trees and more or less created a free for all breeding colony of Gt Cormorants and Pygmy Cormorants, which being great tree roosters and producers of scat, are currently in the process of killing the rest of the trees and providing unhealthy competition for the other species also reliant on the Lake's fish but that's bye and bye. It's a Ramsar Wetland and rightly so. Host to over 227 species of birds in the area including some 500 plus Pelicans which come to feed daily on the Lake. In addition to White Pelican, Greece also provides habitat for some 6-7% of the World's population of Dalmatian Pelicans - status 'vulnerable' in Europe. Anyway ..... blah blah.
I regularly saw lots of GW Egret, Purple Heron, Squacco Heron, Little Bittern, Night Heron, Grey Heron, Spoonbill, Little Egret ... loads of crappy sketches of these twisty, hunchy, stretchy, off-with-their-heads kind of dagger-billed nightmares - 'Scuse the messiness, only had one sketch book and started to re-use some pages towards the end of the fortnight - these really tested me! (The strange mix of Pelican bills and Pygmies was an idea I sketched out for a painting based on a feeding frenzy I witnessed a few days before I returned (A painting which will probably never actually be a painting knowing me)