The day started well with another (for me) significant sighting when this cirl bunting was spotted in the garden.
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| Cirl Bunting |
Once again the early morning light made the colouration hard to see but this bird does not occur in the North and was a definite a 'lifetime first.' Again it's not looking in the right direction.
But today was principally the day when we were scheduled to meet the griffon vultures at the Sierra de Guarra where they are regularly fed in large numbers by an elderly Spanish chap and a younger woman I assumed to be a relative of his. The gen was that the vultures would have no qualms about taking the lamb carcasses offered and there would also be Lämmergeier that would hover above before moving in to eat up the bones.
Unfortunately we were delayed by an hour, having been sent on a massive diversion to avoid a landslip and by then almost of the Lämmergeier had given it up as a bad job.
The temperature was up to around 15-16C and so there were a couple of butterflies sunning themselves on the track towards the feeding spot - a silhouette of a green hairstreak and a speckled wood.
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The speckled wood is the darker aegeria form rather than the lighter tircis form generally seen in the UK.
Once into the reserve, there was evidence of the bait put out for the Lämmergeier with the uneasy appearance of a pagan offering.
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| Lämmergeier bait |
When we got there we had to sit down and stay silent and then:
An everyday story of vulture folk
Of course it wasn't all harmony and light:
A squabble
As the hungry hordes gradually ran out of dead meat to fight over, some opportunist ravens took the opportunity of hoovering up the scraps.
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| Raven |
After the excitement we headed for lunch near Calla Unica where I foraged a bit in the car park finding the first buff-tailed bumblebee I've seen this year, some beeflies that were notably smaller than the one I see in the garden (dark-edged beefly) and the one seen on Day 1. There were also some mini-mining bees, though as ever identifying them would be completely another story.
The spot we chose offered a view back over the vulture feeding zone in the hope of sighting the Lämmergeier and, just when it looked like we wouldn't succeed, a few eagle-eyed (no pun intended) members of the group found a couple, one showing up nicely in the distant sunlight.
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| Lämmergeier |
Near our next destination we came across another bird I had never even heard of before, let alone seen - a black wheatear.
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| Black Wheatear |
It followed the trend set by earlier sightings in presenting a view from the rear.
The next stop was in the heights at the Castillo Montearagon, on top of which there were a lot of chough, which mainly flew off as we drove in.
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I've submitted the bee photo to a couple of local experts but neither has responded.
While all this was going on, I hadn't realised that the others had found a couple of dartford warblers and scrambled around a bit to at least get a fleeting sighting of yet another bird I hadn't seen before.
All in all, a pretty profitable day.
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