North Macedonia is a haven for wildlife, at dusk every evening you see the swallows dipping and swooping all around.

The swallows build nests very very quickly! In the spring we had seen that within a couple of hours a nest appeared in every corner of the overhang on the balcony and the patio. When we moved into the house one of the nests still had 2 babies in it and we would sit quietly in the corner watching the mother come to feed them. We didn’t see them take their maiden flight which was a shame but hoped that they had enjoyed being the first inhabitants of our house!

All around us we saw Stork nests, high up on all the telegraph poles enormous nests with these enormous birds in them. These birds appear to come back to their nests often and don’t leave them in one go like the swallows do. The contrast with the blue skies is quite amazing.

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Since visiting North Macedonia I have fallen totally in love with honey, fresh from the beehives, locally produced honey.

On every piece of wasteland there seem to appear beehives. Because around our house there are still some undeveloped plots of land we have seen beehives popping up.

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Often in the morning I see the beekeepers coming along and collecting the honey, my mouth waters at the thought. The honey is sold in large jars, often mixed with walnuts and different seeds to be added straight into my morning bowl of yoghurt! Yum yum!

It seems also that its not only Goats and dogs that come to visit us, we had another little visitor the other day but by the time he got to the front door we had gone to bed.