Desolation

Remnants of one of the last houses left standing in a small condominium next to our friends' place, of which no trace remained after the 2011 floods. We were told that the owner had hoped to return to it, but he has obviously had to give up on that idea and someone has bought the timbers and anything else they can salvage. At least that's better than having the whole place sacked, as happened with three of the other houses. Someone from across the river simply set about dismantling them, in broad daylight and with no authorisation, and sold all his loot.

Otherwise a pleasant day, bonus Monday with no work coming in so was able to organize some photos and spend some time with the gardener uprooting rubbishy low growth that makes bird spotting even more difficult. Only problem with the photos was that, after painstakingly assembling a poster montage of slightly random photos, I found the fat package with the ones I had actually intended to use. Oh well, will just have to make another, bigger poster - but we're running out of wall space...

Quick walk with the dogs (i.e. me in car, nursing bad knee, and dogs running in front, behind and every which-way) before heading back to Rio. Beautiful late afternoon light catching the blossoms on the kapok trees, the bougainvillea and the palms, parrots shouting their heads off as they gathered for the night, and little yellow-chested warblers refusing to stay still long enough for me to get a shot.