Birding Extremadura

Griffon Vulture (Raymond de Smet) Calm, long summer days, not a cloud in sight, nor the brush of a breeze. Against the vastness of the blue dome there is just one movement that catches my eye. Approaching from the north, the object moves on an unwavering course, a flight path on fixed bearing, as it were. There is no sign of propulsion. The glide lasts across my entire view of the sky. Its wings, broad but tapering slightly towards their tips, show no motion. Their shape are sufficient to identify this as a Griffon Vulture, and as this individual disappears from view, two others are overhead, again as if drawn by invisible threads. On such a day, vultures are finding thermals rising from the plains. Up currents of air, triggered by slight temperature gradients are somehow located by soaring birds: the vultures, eagles, storks. It is by the presence of such birds, rising in spiral fashion (described often as a "kettle") that we detect these otherwise invisible pumps of air...

Spoonbills (John Hawkins) July misleads us, faking a quiet time, a balmy summery lull. Bird song has almost disappeared and in its place the electric buzz of mid-afternoon cicadas. The heat builds and we retire indoors, solace in the shade and time for a siesta. But there are subplots underway and understated. One signal comes from the referee's whistle calls from Bee-eaters. As they were when spring arrivals, now they seem again to be high above, in earshot, but almost out of sight. Difficult to pick out against the hazy blue sky, parties wheel, dive and swoop, as if whole colonies were on the move. Perhaps they are. They will be around still for a few weeks, but the sense they give is restlessness, nomadism, exploring the skies in search for food before the southward migartion starts. More evident, but still far from dramatic, is the arrival of new faces on the rice fields and other wetland sites. Since late June a trickle of passage waders has started, first Lapwings and G...

Young White Storks in Trujillo (Martin Kelsey) Different sounds and rather different looking birds are now making their presence felt as the year moves past the solstice.  It is as if a switch has been clicked to a different setting. The landscape had settled some time ago into its summer lull, sun-dried grasses tall on the wayside and patchily spread across the unkempt pastures. For some this is an unattractive time of year, seemingly bereft of growth, of green. But for me, the harsh conditions, perhaps even unforgiving, represent both a challenge and also a story of life. We witness nothing more than part of a cycle, with the commotion and energy of spring subsiding as a spent force. Now is a time for fruits and seeds, for a slow reabsorption of plant material, through dessication and decomposition, back to the earth. And for many of the birds now the final chapters of their own breeding cycles. By and large, song has been switched off, but instead unfamilar sounds reach o...

Male Lesser Kestrel (photo by John Hawkins) June is a superb time to be watching our town-dwelling Lesser Kestrels. They are hard at work bringing food for their chicks in the nests. Standing last weekend in the main square of Trujillo with my colleague Jesús Porras we watched birds that were nesting in the centre of town continually heading out in precisely the same northerly heading. Although we could not recognise birds individually, there seemed to be almost waves of departures followed just minutes later by a return, which each bird carrying, usually in the bill, but sometimes in their talons, large insects to feed the young. These grasshoppers, giant centipedes and crickets would have been detected by the Lesser Kestrels during their hovering flight over the dry grasslands, now with tall yellow stems winnowing in the breeze. Loose groups of Lesser Kestrels, holding themselves motionless , each hanging at about the same height above the ground, can be encountered over the larg...

High in the Gredos Mountains in late May (Martin Kelsey) It stands as a great granite wall, across our northern horizon. Easily visible from most of the Cáceres province, the Sierra de los Gredos, part of the long mountain chain called the Sistema Central, forms not only the northern limits of Extremadura but rises from the flat plains below like an impenetrable barrier. The southern flanks of these mountains, which reach two and a half thousand metres above sea-level, are steep and from a distance appear dark and brooding. Throughout autumn, winter and spring, these south-facing slopes will alternate between being snow-clad or bare, following the vagaries of weather, so that in the middle of a dry, sunny winter there may be hardly any snow in sight, whereas just last week, they were blanketed by a mid-May surprise. Now, the sunshine is clearing again the slopes, so just little pockets of snow remain on the highest ridges. Ascending the slopes, on twisting roads following ancient...

Plains in May (Martin Kelsey) It is as dramatic a transformation to the landscape as our autumnal " second spring ", equally fortelling of the weeks ahead. I have been out in the field every single day for the last month, but even I have been taken by surprise by the swiftness of change, engineered this year by the catalyst of several weeks without rain and higher than usual temperatures. As with the late September greening, the place to witness this metamorphosis is on the plains. The grasses shot up in height in April, with the flowering heads of different species head aloft on tall, fine stems, creating the beauty of the rippling, sometimes almost upwelling, as the breeze strokes the land. The tell-tale signs were there for those who cared to look, as the stems, paler than the lusher leaves, gave the greeness of the grasslands a slightly washed-out appearance. And then, the leaves having performed their role, and the seeds now set, the whole plant turns a sandy yellow ...

Nightingale (Martin Kelsey) Late April and I rise at six, which is well over an hour before sunrise. It is high season for the business and there is breakfast to prepare, packed lunches and organising the day's guided birding. But my routine is simple. Washed, shaved and dressed, I come downstairs and open the front door. With no moon at the moment, the sky, still not showing any glimmer to the east, is illuminated only by stars. Scorpio dominates the southern sky - slung across my view, stretching across my horizon. I always pause and take in a deep breath of pre-dawn air. I pause again and listen. Without fail, at the end of April there are always two birds singing: it is too early for the chatter of the conversations of waking sparrows, nor the Blackbird or Swallow. From near at hand, indeed just feet away to my left, comes the urgent, clean and full-bodied notes of Nightingale. This bird will have been singing throughout the night, as waking moments will have testified. F...