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“Nice village.” This is what it says in the little house where these three cormorants are that I have photographed with the first lights of the sun while they were scratching their necks and sunbathing, as seen in The Readers’ Photos of La Vanguardia.
Where did I capture the images? Well, in a place where, years ago, pollution was abundant, a place that has recovered.
This is the estuary formed by the Nervión and Idiazabal rivers and several tributaries, the Bilbao estuary, in the Bay of Biscay. It is the mouth that forms the system of these rivers and their last tributaries on their arrival to the Cantabrian Sea.
It is worth remembering that, until the middle of the 20th century, the Bilbao estuary was a dumping ground for waste, both industrial and urban, which was thrown indiscriminately into its waters, polluting them.
It was in the 1980s when sanitation work began. Not only were the waters purified, once again attracting birds such as cormorants, but the vegetation on the banks flourished. With all this, the oxygenation rate is around 60%.
The estuary is today a tourist attraction in the city of Bilbao, with walks along its banks that, among other things, allow you to capture photographs like these.
