Birding Extremadura

The secret pools (Martin Kelsey) Just over forty kilometres from home, the place could have been on another continent. Standing in the shade of a grove of alders and strawberry trees, amongst water-smoothed boulders, a deep dappled pool fed by a gushing torrent, I felt bourne away to a sub-tropical Andean mountain stream. The water in the pool was so clear that I watched shoals of small fish twisting in silver flashes. We were tucked into a gorge, a strip of lush green squeezed between the thrusts of ancient quartzite. The crests of the cliffs above us were the eroded splinters of these vertical planes, extraordinarily held in place by gravity. The high-summer blue sky was constantly criss-crossed by Griffon Vultures, along with flutters of Crag Martins and Red-rumped Swallows. A group of four nimble White-rumped Swifts chased each other in front of the rock face.  A constant flow (Martin Kelsey The stream entering the gorge had long ago dried-up. The gushing cool water now at our feet

Collared Pratincole (Martin Kelsey) The rice fields are at their most uniform. A vast spread of small rectangular plots, all with lush lime-green growing crop, are fed by a hierarchy of canals, channels, ditches and plastic-lined breaks in the bunds. The water is gravity-carried from the Sierra Brava Reservoir. Bare-earth bunds retain the paddies, their upper part baked by the 40º heat, the lower half of the bank darkened by the osmotic rise of moisture. These bunds are alleyways for the birds hanging out here: freshly arrived Northern Lapwings, gangs of Tree Sparrows, rows of White Storks and Cattle Egrets and the clay-coloured Collared Pratincoles. These anomalous waders shuffle on their short legs, but maintain an elegance thanks to their long wings neatly folded over their forked tails. When at rest at a distance they appear rather dowdy, but when closer, my attention is carried to their heads and necks: their short, curved bill, reddish at its base, a creamy throat neatly defined

Juvenile Nightingale (Martin Kelsey) As dusk approaches, a dark and long-legged sprite bounds into view. Its effortless long hops  make the bird seem weightless, or at least as light as a feather. As it lands it holds its slender body upright, wings droop slightly and the tail raises just above the horizontal. It peers quizzically sideways and leans forward. Changing its mind, with its tail making a hesitant quiver, it springs into another three hops. A pause again, but this time a peck and its tweezer-like bill nips up an ant from the stone paving.   The tail is burnt sienna in colour, its upperparts duller brown with a greyish paler wash below. The combination of pale buffy spots on its back and wing-coverts and its mottled head and breast suggest a young bird. It is indeed a juvenile Nightingale, just starting to venture out on its own. It is not bothered by my presence, hopping to within two metres from me, and then only diverting away thanks to the distraction of the harvester ant