Poland

Thank you Les and Jane for a most interesting evening hearing about your Polish trip. It was a fascinating account and I have been googling and thinking about Poland ever since. Especially the Wieliczka salt mine! Above is one of the salt sculptures in the underground chapel of St Kinga (complete with chandeliers made from crystalline salt) in the salt mine that Les showed photos of. It illustrates the 700-year-old legend of the beginnings of the mine. A Hungarian princess, Blessed Kinga threw her ring into the salt mine and on the way to Cracow, where she was to get married into the Polish Royal Family, she stopped and asked her servants to dig a well in the pointed place. Instead of water, salt was discovered and in the first lump of salt Kinga’s ring was found.
And on to the birds...
Poland is the kingdom of white storks - there is no other country with more stork residents per square kilometre. As indicated by the latest statistics, there are 40 900 stork couples nesting in there.


And they even have citrine wagtails in Poland!