A few of Spain's birds

Black Redstart

Cirl Bunting

Crag Martin

Dartford Warbler

Rock Bunting

White Stork

Great Grey Shrike

White Stork

Tree Sparrow

Griffon Vulture

White Stork

Spotless Starling

Although this was to be a wolf watching trip (we hoped!), we thought we could use the days to photograph birds. We knew we wouldn't see any new birds so that pressure was off but perhaps we had really gone too early for birds as there just wasn't the numbers we had hoped for. The weather really didn't help us either with temperatures struggling to get above freezing every day. Infact it was -7 every morning. I think we reached the dizzy heights of 5 degrees one day! But, if we had gone any later in the year, the wolves would have been impossible to find as the scrub would have grown and a heat haze would have made looking through a telescope almost impossible.

Anyway, we managed 90 birds the highlight being of course, the Great Bustards at Villafafila.

CTR Veniata, San Pedro de las Hererias

It felt so good to finally get a Lobo on this board. We had 3 and then 7 during our stay.

The base for our weeks wolf watching trip to Spain. A perfect location being just a mile away from the Pista de Linarejos. Antonio junior and senior looked after us with a spotless room, heating (a necessity!), lovely home cooked food and endless wolf information.

Spain snaps

We made a trip into Portugal on Friday, about 40 miles away to the town of Braganca. As you can see, no snow ! It was so much warmer. The town had died though with most shops and houses derelict, just simply abandoned and left to the elements. The main square had a look of home about it with the cidar drinkers laying around. Quite sad to see really.

Spanish Snow

Our week was going so well..........until this arrived silently on Tuesday night !
It made rural driving almost impossible, infact for a full day we couldn't get up the hill out of our village. This snow wasn't forecast which makes the spanish weather forecasters as reliable as ours ! The snow continued throughout Wednesday and stopped Thursday lunchtime, depositing a good 4". There was no way our little car would get up 'wolf track', so on Thursday at 6am with the temperature at -7, we set off to walk it. No luck with the wolves, infact it was very difficult to find any landmarks and no movement was obvious. So, with near hypothermia we beat a retreat back for breakfast.