Great White Egret, photographed in Bulgaria in Feb 2010A train journey at the weekend took me north up to the Danube (the Donau here) at Regensburg: already a big river, but a long way away from the great waterway we'll be staying on in the Delta in May! Still plenty of space on this trip, if anyone fancies it: there can't be a better opportunity to enjoy a small group trip to the Delta! And with all the snow in Austria and Germany this winter, it looks like there'll be plenty of water to spread around!
Meanwhile, a couple of nice surprises out of the train window.
First was a Great White Egret just outside Landshut, jerking along a culverted urban stream (and on the return journey, standing out in the middle of a damp field, contemplating the mole hills.), adding a touch of bright Japonisme to the snowy, grey landscape.
Further on, where a trackside stream moved through some woodland there were clear signs that the local European Beavers have woken up, with several felled trees damming the stream and bright, fresh chippings and knawings. No sign of the beasts themselves (but what chance of that from a moving train?), but exciting nonetheless: to see a European Beaver is one of my targets for my time in Munich, as they're pretty well distributed along the Donau and the Isar north of the city. The reintroduction of Beavers to Bavaria in the 1970s has been such a success that this is the source of further reintroduction projects across Europe, in Croatia, Romania, Hungary, Belgium and most recently to Knapdale in Scotland.
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