Big birds in a land of wine and cork
A PORTUGUESE friend had a couple of farmers in tow, men with strong grips and flowery moustaches, down from Alentejo, a vast province one-third of the land mass of a country still baking in end-of-summer heat.
The farmers, fit and hardy sons of the soil, had a mantra common to agricultural persons the world over: “We may have land, lots of land perhaps — but we have no money!”
They were cork men — who once every nine years harvest the oak tree bark for cork. They had some prized black pigs roaming the many acres of scattered scrub for a very valuable product when cured and matured. Interests also include olives and grapes — for famous wines — and grain grown in steppelike tracts that stretch from castellated farmsteads to the horizon. Lying fallow every other year enables an astonishing variety of wild birds to flourish.
My Portuguese friend, Dr Borges, also an Alentejan, usually greets me with the phrase ‘Alentejo Blue’ the title of a novel by the British-Bangladesh writer Monica Ali which features the antics of ex-pats and locals in a rural place.
For more than a decade I have passed through Alentejo, from Lisbon or from the Algarve towards Beja or Evora or the country around Castro Verde in quest of a sighting of a massive bird, the Great Bustard — which, at around 10kg, is Europe’s heaviest bird.
It takes off like a transport plane and seems as big as a sheep. In flight it is like a giant goose with eagle wings, and on spring mornings the males put on a spectacular display, raising their tails, drawing their necks backwards and inflating them like balloons, their long bristling moustaches pointing straight up. The bird appears to be in a bath of white feathers.
Alentejo (alem-de-tejo or beyond the river) and the abutting Spanish province of Extremadura, is home for hundreds of birds, from rare black storks and tall, striding cranes, to calandra larks, spotless starlings, azure-winged magpies, bee-eaters and several species of eagle and vulture for which the occasional dead sheep is left out, the farmer being paid by the authorities.
Growing fears about plastic use and abuse has brought respite to the cork farmers who support a living for about 100,000 people in Spain and Portugal. Market forces had driven up plastic bung and screw-cap use on wine bottles especially among New World producers with 20pc of the market.
The World Wildlife Fund had concerns that this could change the cork-oak landscape as demand for the natural product diminished and farmers would turn to other cash crops and plough the landscape.
But there now appears to be a pause on the plastic path. Bear this in mind when choosing your next bottle, stopped with a cork.