as part of the Kiskunsági National Park let me introduce Mártély, the pearl of river Tisza.



http://www.martely.hu

Mártély Landscape Protection Area
Territory of the protected area: 2 232 hectares.
Location: The landscape protection area is situated in line with Hódmezővásárhely on the left bank of the Tisza.
Visitors: Freely accessible for visitors except for the communities of herons.
Management: Directorate of the Kiskunság National Park
The landscape near Mártély is one of the most beautiful parts on the southern section of the Tisza: dead channels, mortlakes, wet meadows, genistas, marshy areas alternate on the broadening river flats.
The about ten kilometre long and sometimes as much as four kilometre wide flood area between the dams was formed during the river control at the end of the 19th century when hundreds of navies erected the dams with hard physical work while the large bends were cut off. During the work the required earth was extracted from masses of pits and over the decades these pits completely grew into the wet marshy landscape, thus the landscape of the river flat closely connected to social history was born.

The protected area consists of three parts greatly differing from each other. The northern part including the dead channel at Mártély embracing the Ányás island is the noisiest part of the area. Though the dead channel itself and the gallery forest on the island are captivatingly beautiful, there are restaurants, a beach, weekend cottages and rest homes built next to each other, and, especially at weekends and in summer the population is quite dense. But with a rented boat places recalling the water world of the former river even here can be found.
South of the dead channel the Kutyafenék (dog-buttock), then the Körtvélyes dead channel (with the Körtvélyes island) and finally the Barci meadow follows. While Kutyafenék is still reached by large numbers of visitors, only the lovers of nature, the landscape and silence go any farther.
Already the groves in the river flat at Kutyafenék are wonderful: brooms, groups of poplars and willows, with occasional patches of oak, foxtail marshy meadows. The river flat at Mártély is often completely covered with water during the spring and early summer floods and for a long time after the recess of the flood unfordable marshes dominate the territory. By mid-summer the majority of meadows are only slightly wet, the former conditions are only preserved in the lower lying places and the pits. The communities and plants of the Barci meadow situated on the south are mostly identical with the previous ones, but its fauna is much richer thanks to their undisturbed life.

The Körtvélyes dead channel is more diverse that the Mártély one from botanical aspects as well. Though originally both similar habitats are characterized by the same communities and species, here the visitor is enchanted by the captivating beauty and richness of the backwater. The picturesque dead channel is hidden by rich communities of gallery woods of soft wood, (no sylviculture has been conducted in the gallery woods of the protected area for a long time, so the fallen dead trees and the rich undergrowth of the regularly flooded areas create an impassable jungle reminiscent of rainforests). The water is inhabited by communities and plants characteristic of dead channels: water-chestnut, floating watermoss, frogbit, pondweed, common duckweed, duckweed, arrowhead (Sagittaria sagittifolia).

Weather-fish, European mud-minnow, several species of frogs live in waters and marshes with little oxygen content and several hundreds of bird species nest in the territory of the protected area, mainly in the heron communities and gallery woods of the southern part night heron, little egret and great white heron, squacco heron, common heron and purple heron. Sandpipers, gulls, ducks feed on the wet meadows, drying up marshes. The white-tailed eagle can be found among the most protected nesting birds but black kites and tawny owls also nest here.
Visitors can meet these species day by day but a similarly great experience is to sit and watch a wooded marshy meadow at a summer dawn. The world reverberates: warblers (Phylloscopus sp.), warblers (Sylvia), nightingales, reed songbirds and dozens of other songbirds perform. The most undisturbed parts of the Mártély river flats are habitats for wild cats and otters.
all quoted from foek.hu pages

related from GEC:
Hmvhely by the River
Hmvhely, the town of pubs

This is the graphic i have made there in artists-camp! Thanks for Mártély's misterious atmosphere.

Sz.G.: Landscape with skull and faces - Sinister dusk (2002. summer)