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Articles in ‘Iberianature news’
Archive of articles
February 11th, 2010 I’ve just posted this new archive of blog articles, organised by month and year. Hope it’s useful.Spanish places
February 9th, 2010I’ve been working recently on a new guide to places in Spain using Google maps as a way of organising them spatially. I find it interesting to see how places I’ve visited and/or written about over the years, join up together on the map. I still don’t understand how to get the best out of Google Maps, but I think that building up this database will allow lots of new forms of representing information. Visit Places in Spain
Have a look for example at these places:
Reptiles and amphibians on the forum
September 1st, 2009
The iberianatureforum has become the place to identify and learn about the reptiles and amphibians of Spain. Recently we’ve had discussions on sharped ribbed newts, viperine snakes, smooth snakes, horseshoe whipsnakes, tree frogs and juvenile ocellated lizards. More here
There’s also a rather nice seletion of images of reptiles and amphibians uploaded by our members.
British isles nature
June 27th, 2009Totally unrelated to Spain, but yes with nature and geography, I’ve been busy working on the new britainnature section, a guide to the geography and wildlife of the British Isles.
Iberianature – pagerank of 5
June 22nd, 2009Iberianature now been upped to a Google Page Rank of 5 and is now in Google Directory’s top ten travel sites for Spain. According to Google Analytics, iberianature (without the forum) receives every month over 70,000 visits, around 160,000 page views and 60,000 unique users
Barcelona blog
April 29th, 2009
The new iberianature Barcelona blog is starting to take shape…More on our walking tours shortly.
Barcelona blog
Environmental volunteer work in Spain
November 27th, 2008A friend of mine, Anna Gallés, is helping out with the Spanish version of iberianature – naturaiberica. At the moment she’s compiling this very useful directory of opportunities for environmental volunteer work in Spain. A wide range of activities is available from with working black vultures in the Balearics to helping amphibians in Catalonia. I won’t translate these activities into English as some limited knowledge of Spanish is always going to be necessary to join up to these programmes, but if anyone has any specific questions, please don’t hesitate to email me.
Anna Gallés is a natural history painter with a lovely eye for detail Visit Anna’s blog and see more of her work
Iberianature nominated for Spanish WWF Panda Awards
October 20th, 2008
Iberianature has been nominated for the Spanish WWF Panda Awards. If you like iberianature please vote for us here.
Latest from the blogs
September 3rd, 2008Latest posts from Simon and Lucy which you may not have come across. Simon looks here are at the geology which may have helped inspire Guadí to build La Sagrada Familia, and Lucy tells the tale here of the last days of bee-eaters before they fly south.
New iberianature organisation
August 8th, 2008At the behest of several people, I’ve begun the long slog of re-organising all the old html and new wordpress material into a series of channels (mammals, birds, climate, etc). I’m also cross referencing heavily the iberianatureforum. So far only the “channel” on mammals is more or less finished. Note the pages on bears, lynx and wolves are channels in their own right with specific news feeds
Eventually these channels will probably become the main entrance into iberianature along with news feeds.
New blog by Simon Rice
July 25th, 2008
I’m pleased announce that Simon Rice, another iberianatureforum stalwart has just begun his own blog on iberianature. Simon is an excellent writer with an eye for the quirkier side of things, and is, like myself, a geographer who enjoys looking for patterns in landscapes, and interplay between geography, history and nature. He divides his time between Tarragona city and Fígols de Tremps, a hamlet in the Leridan Pyrenees so he’ll be concentrating on southern and western Catalonia. Here’s an extract from his first post, illustrated with the photo above.
What is it that makes a landscape so stunning? Certainly not sheer size as in this case the valley is dwarfed by the higher ranges just to the north and the two local big sierras, Boumort and Montsec. Walking the mile or so (a couple of kilometres at most) of farm track towards the Obac de Serradell, the last flat, cultivated space at the head of the valley, it struck me that here quite the opposite was the case; even though the landscape is big, even by Spanish standards, it is small enough to be constantly changing as I walked up the valley, with new vistas and facets emerging with every turn. Plus there is a lovely juxtaposition between the bare cliffs and the wooded slopes that reach up to them from the valley floor. Meanwhile, the domesticity of the immediate surroundings, with their rolling meadows and quaint bordes, or field barns, contrasted with the primordial appearance of the dense forest and the heavily eroded slopes.
New blog on iberianature by Lucy Brzoska
June 30th, 2008
I’m pleased to announce that iberianatureforum stalwart Lucy Brzoska has started her own blog on iberianature called straightforwardly enough, Lucy’s Blog. Lucy will probably concentrate on Barcelona and environs with forays into the Catalan Pyrenees and her beloved Leonese mountains.
Check out this frankly excellent post by Lucy, on Barcelona’s best kept secret, the heronry, perched in the trees above the city’s zoo. Read Citadel of herons
In the near future Simon Rice will be joining in with his own blog from the deepest hinterlands of Catalonia.
Wind farms and nature in Spain
June 18th, 2008A couple of articles on wind farms and their effect on nature and wildlife
One of Spain’s last untouched landscapes, the Sierra de Gata in north-western Extremadura, may shortly be inundated with up to 19 wind farms. The Times
And this piece by Steve West on his very nicely designed Birding in Spain site. “Should the inhabitants of Terra Alta, Montsià and Matarranya, with the great natural and scenic wealth of Els Ports, the serres of Pàndols and Cavalls, the wonderful via verda, the rivers Matarranya, Estrets, Algars (the cleanest in the Mediterranean basin)…should they let it all go and allow the hills to be plastered with wind turbines? ” Birding and sustainable tourism versus windfarms
This topic is also currently being hotly debated on the forum here. Renewable Energy, but at any price?
Greater Flamingos plummet at Fuente de Piedra
June 15th, 2008Excellent and very worrying post by Peter of Spanishbirds on the forum
Greater Flamingo first colonised Fuente de Piedra back in 1963 and has since made the area a star attraction for many visitors. With a maximum count of some 34,000 birds being present in the past then it is not surprising why many people want to make this area a ‘must see’ site during their stay in Andalusia….
It is sad to report that the numbers of Flamingos present at Fuente de Piedra are now down to 4 individuals and that non-breeding has been drastically affected by abuses of self interest and the lack of managed water resources…. Read the full post on the forum
The rainfall records for Spain keep tumbling. According to the latest provisional figures 
I’ve just come across 
Three Iberian lynxes of the captive breeding programme have died in recent weeks from a renal disease. Lynxes in the wild are thought not to suffer from this disease.