Ponidzie Nida Valley

The Nida runs south through soft rock to the Vistula and, because it has never been regulated over much of its length, it meanders freely across a wide floodplain with oxbows, backwaters and marsh - which is why the valley holds birds in numbers, including bittern, corncrake, black-tailed godwit, marsh harrier and a large heronry, and why it is one of the more serious birding areas in central Poland. The geology is the other half. This is gypsum country: the rock dissolves faster than limestone, producing sinkholes, small caves and, at Skorocice and Krzyzanowice, exposures of large transparent gypsum crystals, some of them a metre across, which is unusual anywhere. The dry gypsum slopes carry a xerothermic steppe flora - feather grass, pasqueflower, orchids - that is a relict of a warmer post-glacial period. Wislica, a small town in the valley, has a Romanesque collegiate church with an engraved floor slab of the twelfth century.

What you actually see

• A free meandering river - unregulated, with oxbows and marsh across a wide floodplain.
• Giant gypsum crystals - exposures at Skorocice and Krzyzanowice, some a metre across.
• Steppe flora on dry slopes - feather grass and orchids surviving from a warmer period.
• A serious bird valley - bittern, corncrake, godwit and a large heronry.

When to go

April to June for birds and flowering. Two days.

Honest expectations

There is little infrastructure - few hides and no visitor centre of consequence. A car is needed and the roads are minor. Mosquitoes on the floodplain are severe in summer. Gypsum sites are unfenced and unmarked.

Nearby

Wislica and its Romanesque church are south; Pinczow is the valley town.