Exploring Extremadura - Days 1 and 2am: The Vultures Descend

Back in mid-April, I headed off on my annual overseas trip. Having spent the last two trips in cold places, Iceland and Arctic Norway, I decided this year I would head southwards and to warmer and sunnier climes. So starting about 6 months before the trip arrangements were made for a trip for myself and my friend Steve Round to spend 10 days in Extremadura and the surrounding areas in Spain. For those of you who have not heard of this area, it is about 1.5 -2 hours drive South-West of Madrid. An area of mountains and expansive steppe grasslands that is renowned for its diversity and abundance of bird life.

The plan for the holiday was a flight from Madrid, pick up a hire car, drive down to Calera y Chozas which would be our base for the stay. The first 5 days would be spent photographing birds from some hides setup and operated by Hides de Calera and the remaining days would be spent wandering the hills and farmland to see what birds we could find. Regular readers will know I am not a great fan of fixed hides but they are a means to an end.

Equipment for the trip would be a Canon 1dx2, Canon 5dmk4, 600mm II F4 lens, 100-400 II lens with both the 1.4x and 2x extenders. A tripod, monopod, skimmer, and a Uniqball head completed the setup. Of course this was combined with the usual laptop and double portable drive back up.

The day of departure was a fairly relaxed affair as we had a late afternoon Easyjet departure from Liverpool to Madrid. This was fairly stress free with the speedy boarding, extra leg-room seats and easy hand luggage restrictions for the photography equipment. All went smoothly and we were soon collecting our luggage at Madrid. Collecting the hire car was a long-drawn out aware as the hire company insisted on photographically recording every minute dent and paintwork scratch on the Opal Mokka. We were soon on the road but it took a couple of laps of the complicated road system around the airport before we hit the right road towards our destination. It took a little while to find our hotel once we reached Calera y Chozas at around 11:30 pm, mainly because we had driven right past it in the dark. Our accommodation for the 10 nights was the low cost Hostal Restaurante Cuatro Caminos. Our rooms were large and clean but rather spartan.

Once in my room, I quickly sorted out my stuff and got a pile of clothes and the camera equipment ready for the next day as we would be getting picked up around 5:30am for the first hide session. I got into bed, slightly weary from the travel, to find the walls gently vibrating to some extremely loud snoring coming from a room two doors away down the corridor. I could only guess how loud it must have been in Steve's room next door. Outside, a Scoops Owl started its monotone repeated call...which went on for most of the night as I drifted in and out of a restless sleep. I never sleep well anywhere on the first night.

The phone's alarm rattled into life at 5am and could just about be heard above the snoring rumble. I was quickly dressed and downstairs and managed to grab a quick coffee and a pre-packed choc-au-pain for breakfast. Steve and I joined two other photographers in the darkness outside the front of the hotel and after a short wait two cars arrived to collect us. The hide session for the morning would primarily be aimed at vultures and other birds that arrived at a feed site around 50 minutes drive to the north. It looked like we would be in for a morning of good weather and light. We came off the main road and headed up a track that wound its way through rough grazing pasture before arriving at two small hides. The hides were situated at the edge of a large meadow with a back drop of the snow-topped Gredos mountains. Jose had explained that the flowering of the meadow has been inhibited by a recent prolonged dry spell.

Steve and I were allocated the left hand hide which I was pleased with as we had an attractive patch of flowering lavender to the left together with various old bits of tree stumps for the birds to perch on. This was the scene in front of the hide.

 As we settled in to the hide, Jose emptied and spread a dustbin of meat scraps around the area in front of the two hides. All we had to now was wait for the birds to arrive and it didn't take long. The first birds to arrive where White Stork and we soon had a dozen birds strutting around picking of bits of meat scrap in front of the hide. The soft early light making it easier to get a nice exposure on the the extensive white of these birds. I have photographed Stork previously, and it is always challenging to find a nice clean bird but there were a couple amongst the group.

Next to arrive, where half a dozen Ravens and a number of Black Kites. The ravens, although a large bird, seemed strangely dwarfed by the birds around them and arriving.

Typically the Kites were tending to swoop down and grab pieces of meat from the ground but we did manage to a couple of perches that stopped briefly to perch.

By this point we could see the vultures were circling in and descending downward into the site. They were landing away from the feed area and numbers were now quickly building  to around 80 birds with a 50 / 50 mix of Griffon Vulture and the larger Cinereous Vulture. It seemed that the numbers of vulture needed to build before they got sufficient 'courage' to move in on the food by foot.  These are massive and impressive birds.

Starting off with a selection of the Griffon Vultures.....

....and the larger Cinereous Vulture

After a short frenzied feeding spell by the birds, everything quietened down and the majority of vultures seemed to go into sun-bathing mode soaking up the early morning rays. After a while they started to slowly disperse presumably to take advantage of the developing thermals in the rapidly increasing temperature. However, the departure of the birds  did give some nice opportunities for some low level flight photographs as these birds require a long 'runway' to get airborne.

In the late morning, we heard the sound of  an approaching vehicle up the farm track and it was time to depart. It had been enjoyable and productive start of our Spanish trip. Arriving back at the hotel we sorted out the camera gear and photo downloading and backup before heading out into the midday sun to find some well needed lunch. While we were out we popped into the local supermarket and stocked up on some food and drink supplies for the week ahead. There was just time for a quick siesta to make up for the relatively early start before heading out for an evening session with some bee-eaters which will be the subject of my next post.

Roaming in Romania - Day 9: Full Circle

Four weary photographers head forth on the final session of our photography tour of Romania. Three of us had opted for another session with the technicolour bee-eaters whilst Michael decided to go off stalking larks and bunting in the minibus with Zoltan. The two temporary hides was set-up once again next to the sandbank with the bee-eater colony with Hans in one and Rene and I sharing the other. I had decided for this session I would try and get some bee-eater flight photos as I have none in my library at the moment. I took a couple of portrait photos, while waiting for the light to increase,  before getting down to the business of some flight images.

Being squashed into a pop-up hide with someone else whilst trying to do flight photos is not ideal or particularly easy so all you can do is try and make best of the session and I managed to come away with a few photos before the minibus returned to collect us.

Our final moments of the trip with the cameras were spent near trying to photograph some Spanish sparrow around a car park area and some kind of visitors centre. However, my attention was drawn to a Crested Lark gathering insects  and also a very dirty looking Stork that passed very close by on slow powerful wing beats with a beak full of nest material.

As we drove back to the main road we came across a couple of yellow wagtails and a Great Reed Warbler. The latter kept climbing songs before bursting into its loud warble. This proved to be my last photograph of the trip. I had finished the visit to Romania photographing the same species as my first photographs in the country. I had gone full circle and the trip was complete.

It was just a question now of the the minibus journey back to Bucharest, two flights back to Manchester and a car journey home. I finally got home around 9:30pm in the evening having gained 2 hours time difference en route.

Overall it had been a very memorable trip. I had enjoyed it as the photographs did not always come easily and you had to work to get the images but that made it all the more rewarding. I also really liked the mobile aspect of this trip rather than being locked down in fixed hides for a week on standard perch set-ups. Eastern Europe really is a wonderful place for the bird photographer and I will definitely be returning again in the future.

So to finish off I would like to express my thanks to:

• Zoltan for working tirelessly to make sure all went smoothly and using his magic bird locating powers. 
• To the boatman for his excellent boat handling skills on the Danube Delta.
• Rene, Hans and Michael for being such excellent company on the trip.
• To Sakertours for another superb and extremely well organised trip. 

Thanks for following me on my roamings around Romania and I will be returning to some UK mammals in my next post.

Hungary for Birds - Day 4: Stunning Storks

This is a continuation of my previous post which saw us sat in a hide in front of a small open pool in the middle of the grassland plains of eastern Hungary. For me the star birds of the days were the storks but before I get to them an for completeness I will just post a couple of other species that visited the pond.

Late in the day a Night Heron appeared briefly. I suspect if we has stayed later into the evening more and more of these birds would have arrived. The bird landed on a log and stared with those large penetrating red eyes adapted to feeding in low light conditions.

Clearing up the remnants of fish left around the from the feeding of the large birds were a couple of opportunistic Hooded Crows. Corvids are such intelligent birds especially when there is a free or easy meal on offer.

I have seen storks previously in my wanderings around Europe but they have always been perched up high on their huge nests on a building. When I was making the plans for our trip to Hungary I had a reasonable idea of the range of species I was likely to be photographing but Storks did not appear in the list so this day was a real bonus and a treat. So I make no apology for the number of stork images to follow. We had five White Storks in front of us throughout most of the day. They are an impressively large bird with their striking colour combination of black, white and red.

We had the birds right up to the hide and peering in through the special one-way glass.

The stork fishing technique is interesting and surprisingly effective and involves repeatedly stabbing the water until the bill makes contact with a fish.

The fish is then carried to the side of the pond and repeatedly stabbed until it sufficiently subdued to be swallowed.

The white undersides of the White Storks were generally quite mud stained and one bird made a rather half-hearted attempted at bathing before moving to the side of the pond to shake the excess water off its sodden feathers.

My last photo is of one in flight and as I suspected the carrying of a baby in a blanket is a myth, unless it was just the wrong time of year for that :).

The White Storks were good but it got better as the majority of Storks in front of us were of the black variety a much less common bird. I have seen Black Storks in Zoos and have always stopped to photograph them as they have an amazing iridescence to their plumage. What a joy it was to have 17 wild birds in front of us going about their daily basis. One of the younger birds was ringed with the word 'Poland' clearly stamped on the metal band. I must admit I spent a good proportion of the day photographing these birds as I suspect such opportunities are rare.  I will start of with a couple of portraits of the bird to give you an idea how beautiful they are.

Moving on to some of the action. In flight these birds are impressively large with their huge broad wings that they use for gliding on their long distance migrations. This is a juvenile and young adult birds coming in to the pond.

No fish in the pool was safe when these birds arrived and they moved en mass repeatedly from one end to the other. Fish were being captured all over and a few days of this and I expect there would not have been many left. The appetite of these birds seemed inexhaustible as one large fish after another disappeared between those bright red bills. A series of images below give a small impression of this fish eating frenzy.

Even the birds in juvenile plumage showed a similar voracious appetite and it was not always the prettiest of sights as the young birds tried to swallow large fish whole.

As you can see from this post and the last, which only contain a proportion of the images taken on the day, it had been another amazing and productive in Hungary. As we sat in the hide in the early evening it looked like the sun was about to put in an appearance but in the distance we heard the low rumble of the 4x4 engine making its way across the plains to collect us. The sudden departure of the all the birds indicated our driver had arrived and we could finally leave the hide and back out in to fresh air. This is a day that will remain in my memory for many years to come and I felt almost numb immediately after the experience as we drove back to the hotel because the whole episode had been almost too much to take in.

Plans for the next day were made. A good meal later, a shower, images backed-up and then straight to a welcoming comfortable bed for some well earned rest before the nest day's adventures.