It is always interesting going to different places and noticing the differences and similarities in the sounds and smells.

Here in Faial there are a lot of house sparrows and blackbirds and their calls fill in the ‘typical’ daytime garden song of the UK (interspersed with the harsh but beautiful blackcap song). But in the night we have the beautiful noise of the crickets 😊😊. As yet I haven’t heard nighttime seabird calls but this will come when I move to the islet 😊.

Alongside sound comes smell, and here the wind is punctuated by the salty smell of the sea and non-native flowers including wisteria in impressive bloom. But also different smells of more sub-tropical thicker grass, which has a different smell and takes me back to other sub-tropical places :). There is also an almost heavy smell of humidity (those who have made it to the humid tropic biome at The Eden Project might understand this description).

In Cornwall we are used to sea mist, mizzle, drizzle, mist, light rain, wet rain, dry rain…. the list of names goes on. Here in Faial I am assured that the weather changes fast and we can have all seasons of weather in one day. While I have no doubt this is true, the initial blue sky I saw on arrival last weekend sadly didn’t last and for the whole week we’ve endured varying levels of sea mist density! (I apparently didn’t take any photos of this but we could barely see the sea let alone Pico!).

So to my week – there has been a lot of new: faces, language, culture but surrounded by lovely people who are slowly teaching me Portuguese, interested in what I am doing and where I’m from and, after lunch, naturally always keen to go for a coffee (while I enjoy chocolate gooey bolo/cake :D). I enjoyed (and survived) giving a presentation on my masters thesis work, meeting lots of different researchers and slowly planning final things for this new fieldwork season :).

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This weekend the weather has cleared giving beautiful views of the volcano – Pico.  Pico is the neighbouring island to Faial and is the highest volcano within the Azores. Its magnificence is hard to miss on the Horta side of Faial as it somewhat dominates the sky line (when not covered by mist/cloud) and I gather the saying goes: the best view from Faial is Pico (there are similar levels of rivalry between Faial and Pico as there are between Cornwall and Devon!). And yesterday a friend from the office very kindly showed me around some of the more interesting places in Faial :).

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Part-way through this coming week I will be heading over to Graciosa Island, my base for the next 9 months, and one step closer to the islet.

For now I will leave you with some fantastic murals left by sailing expeditions…

Until next time – greetings from the mid-Atlantic!

Hannah 🙂

P.s. for those interested in the wildlife side I am slowly building up a bird list (it’s a shockingly small list and look forward to improving it soon!):

1. Buzzards (Azorean subspecies – buteo buteo rothschildi) 
2. House sparrows
3. Blackbirds
4. Blackcaps
5. Atlantic canary
6. Yellow-legged gull
7. Common tern
8. some sort of plover
9. European robin