{"id":3052,"date":"2014-06-05T21:43:13","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T20:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=3052"},"modified":"2026-05-23T08:46:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T07:46:27","slug":"displacement-of-ants-and-other-wildlife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2014\/06\/05\/displacement-of-ants-and-other-wildlife\/","title":{"rendered":"Displacement Of Ants And Other Wildlife"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Subtitled by order: Rodney\u2019s birthday<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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\"Azure
Azure Winged Magpies plotting….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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On yet another perfect blue sky day, a day that would be perfect for lazing on a beach, we left the coast and headed inland.\u00a0 Gertie Garmin GPS informed us that it was only 77kms to our destination, but we were wary that she might want to take us along a road marked in our atlas as \u2018road in bad condition\u2019.\u00a0 So I worked out a longer route that would take us via Aljustrel and Ferreira de Alentejo.\u00a0 It was a pleasant drive, nothing exceptional for a long way, just thousands of eucalypts and cork trees.\u00a0 We\u2019ve just discovered that Portugal is the largest producer of cork in the world, which comes in rather handy when they also produce a lot of wine and port\u2026..\u00a0 We\u2019ve also just realised that there aren\u2019t any kookaburras sitting in the old gum trees, so we better send a few of them over to Portugal, along with the koalas.<\/p>\n

We got a bit lost north of Aljustrel, because we couldn\u2019t find any sign posts to Ferreira; there were sign posts to towns in every direction, but not the one we wanted.\u00a0 But it didn\u2019t matter; we enjoyed the unintended diversion through fields and fields of sunflowers, all just starting to come into bloom. \u00a0We passed a large area of square shallow ponds with irrigation channels leading in all directions.\u00a0 As we drove through the midst of them we watched a small white plane flying low over them, back and forth, right and left.\u00a0 We were trying to work out what it was doing and then panicked as it flew straight at us!\u00a0 Rodney shouted \u201cwhat the **** is he doing?\u201d, while I was quickly trying to decide if he was wanting to use our piece of road as a landing strip.\u00a0 Because you\u2019re reading this, it\u2019s fairly obvious that he missed us, but we think Eileen got sprayed as if she was a bit of blue green algae or a pest of some sort.\u00a0 We shut all the windows and vents as quickly as we could and didn\u2019t open them again until we finally found Ferreira de Alentejo.<\/p>\n

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\"
I don’t know how he missed us……<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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We\u2019d been warned by Ian and Ann that our next campsite was in the \u2018middle of nowhere\u2019, so we settled our nerves by stocking up at the Intermarche and then let Gertie Garmin lead us to Camping Markadia, somewhere near Odivelas.\u00a0 As we checked in at reception I had proof as to why I don\u2019t always rely on the GPS, she can get us lost too, or should I say drowned\u2026..<\/p>\n

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\"
“No Gertie, the campsite is not there”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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So we stayed on dry land, picked a lovely spot with the best view of the lake and settled in to an afternoon of being retired. Rodney\u2019s choice of birthday food was a hot dog for lunch and a chicken curry for dinner. Both washed down with a bit of wine. An interesting choice, and definitely not as gourmet as yesterday\u2019s meal on the beach.\u00a0 The overall impression of the campsite was of peace and calm, but the striking, shy, azure winged magpies, which we had admired earlier on this year’s expedition, were not quite the same as the ones living here.\u00a0 These ones were cheeky beyond belief.\u00a0 They would jump on the table to eat crumbs, sit on our chairs, looking for crumbs and if there weren\u2019t any crumbs, they would hang out in the trees around us and look menacing.\u00a0 Their little black caps made them look like bandits and we think that\u2019s what they were.\u00a0 Another tip, don\u2019t sit under them, they are prolific pooers, as my hair discovered, mid-afternoon.<\/p>\n

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\"Who
“Who invited you for lunch?”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Meanwhile, inside the van there was another war happening. Every time we opened a cupboard we would find a few ants; little tiny ones and despite removing contents and spraying, they kept moving and we kept displacing them.\u00a0 Now some of them are becoming\u00a0very long-distance travellers; I\u2019m calling them Wilburys from now.\u00a0 And that\u00a0battle continues…..<\/p>\n

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\"Relaxing
Relaxing by Lake Odivelas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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After dinner we set off on a stroll, but we didn\u2019t get very far.\u00a0 The restaurant was open, so we decided to have another birthday drink before they closed.\u00a0 As we ordered our drinks at the bar, a Dutch couple called over to us.\u00a0 They recognised us from some previous campsites, in fact they were parked right next to us at Isla Cristina in Spain.\u00a0 We couldn\u2019t decide on who was following who.\u00a0 We asked if we could join them at their table, thinking they had finished eating and they welcomed us over.\u00a0 Then their meal arrived, oops. But they insisted on us staying and also invited another Dutch couple over from an adjoining table.\u00a0 The six of us talked and drank for hours and the waitress informed us that they would close at 10:30pm, but it was definitely closer to 11pm by the time we left.\u00a0\u00a0 Cleverly we all managed to get lost trying to find our vans in the dark.\u00a0 We split up when we thought we were close, bumped in to each other again and then all got the giggles.\u00a0 We were still laughing when we finally found Eileen.<\/p>\n

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\"Drinking
Drinking wine; pre bar visit………<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

And so we did manage to celebrate Rodney\u2019s birthday with some displaced Dutch funsters and he woke up on Thursday morning knowing he had definitely had too many wines and beers the night before.\u00a0 Oh and two magpies tried to steal the toast from our breakfast table, hmm.<\/p>\n

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\"One
One little bandit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Subtitled by order: Rodney\u2019s birthday     On yet another perfect blue sky day, a day that would be perfect for lazing on a beach, we left the coast and headed inland.\u00a0 Gertie Garmin GPS informed us that it was only 77kms to our destination, but we were wary that she might want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8326,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052\/revisions\/8326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}