The Spanish Pyrenees, Nov 19th-25th, 2010

The Spanish Pyrenees, home to Lammergeiers and Golden Eagles. Note our feeding excursion team by the pick-up in front of the pines in the centre!

I’m just back from a trip to the Aragonese Pyrenees, where I hoped to improve on my Lammergeier images for my forthcoming book on raptor identification. A week is a short time, and many things can go wrong if you are unlucky, but sometimes you just have to take that risk. After an eventful start, this trip turned out to be a great success.

I arrived in Barcelona in the evening of Nov 19th. Took a hired car and drove to Lleida for the night, arriving there at 11pm.

Next morning I left pre-dawn, heading towards the Pyrenees, on the border between France and Spain. The night was clear still when I left, but already 20 mins later it started to rain, first as a light drizzle, but soon the rain was pouring down as I crossed the Pre-Pyrenees in the dark. At daybreak, an hour or so later, I started to climb the southern slopes of the Pyrenees. By then the rain had turned first into sleet, but rather soon into wet snow, and the snow fell thicker and thicker and the visibility went down to 100 metres. I was on a small and winding mountain road with hairpin bends and steep ups and downs, and no traffic had passed since the snowing started. Not long after this the car started to have problems pushing through the wet snow. Then, as I had feared, the snow got too thick for a normal car to pass. Going uphill second gear was too much for the engine, and driving in first gear got the wheels spinning. Coming downhill was equally horrifying, as just as much as touching the brakes got the car skidding and sliding, which is not good on a narrow road, with a sheer drop of 100m on one side and the cliff face on the other! There was no choice, but to leave the car by the roadside and wait for help. After an hour of waiting and still nobody passing, I decided to call for assistance, but of course there was no reception on the mobile! Eventually I got to a point where I could call for help, and after another hour or so I could move my luggage into a 4×4, but had to leave the car where it was. A memorable start to the trip!

The situation on the road about 1 km before I had to abandon the car.

The view from the site where I left the car.

At this point I have to make a confession: I’m a bit superstitious. If a trip starts with major difficulties, like this one, it is going to turn out to be a huge success in the end. I have experienced hardships in the beginning of a trip before, and luck has always returned. And so it was to be also this time.

The snow kept falling all day, although it got milder towards the evening, a good sign.

Next morning started off mild with a dense fog and the wet snow falling down from the trees. The weather stayed the same all day in the mountains, although the drizzle and fog lifted by the evening. No light to take bird pictures, but on the other hand, no birds either!

On day three, Nov 22, my luck returned. The weather started with some fog in the morning, clearing up later, with bits of blue sky showing through. I spent all day watching and shooting the Lammergeiers, the flying dragons, and I estimate having seen some 30 different birds. Most of the birds were flying above forest and against a milky sky, so the images were not that great. However, there were a few situations when the birds flew below me and I could shoot them against proper background. Anyway, the birds and the scenery were spectacular, and I knew there was more to come…

A young Lammergeier at home

The following day is a day I shall never forget. I was invited by the officials to participate in a feeding excursion to one of the feeding sites. It was a long and arduous journey on small winding tracks through the forest, partly covered in ice and deep snow. In some places even the 4 x 4 jeeps had problems getting through. After an hour or so we arrived at the tree limit, where pine forest gives way to alpine meadows, now lying under a thick layer of snow. The weather was perfect, not a cloud in the deep bleu sky, and the light was so bright that it almost hurt. As soon as the cars approached the feeding area flocks of Griffons started to gather above the area, and soon there was a hundred or so circling high above us. At the same time we also saw the first Lammers gliding in our direction. Everything looked more than promising.

The combined forces of FCQ and the Parque Nacional spreading out the food

Soon bits of meat and bone were flying across the air, when our team scattered the food over a wider area. Meanwhile the vultures were gradually getting lower and lower, and the wing-beats of the heavy Griffons could already be heard.
Then we retreated a few hundred metres to watch the show from a safe distance. As soon as we left the feeding area Griffons descended like parachutes from the sky and Lammergeiers got lower and lower by every circle they completed. Suddenly the air was full of huge wings, grunts and hisses, as the Griffons started the feast, with more and more birds arriving. The show went on for a good three hours, during which time I fired some 1400 shots, probably no more than 30 or so on Griffons, the rest on Lammergeiers, Red Kites and Golden Eagles.

This highly successful trip with its results had been possible without the help of several people. First of all thanks to Juan Antonio Gil at Fundacion para la Conservacion del Quebrantahuesos for sorting out the various arrangements required for my visit. Thanks also to Feliciano Sese and his staff from the Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido for letting me join them on a truly memorable day in the hinterlands of the park, and later, for an excellent dinner at his house watching football, when Real Madrid gave Ajax Amsterdam a beating (sorry for my Dutch friends).
Alvaro Gonzalez, Nina Kaptein and Oscar Diez also helped in many ways, and last but not least, thanks to my friend Javier Elorriaga for his great help with so many different matters over the past years. Muchas Gracias!