Last weekend I appeared in the Sunday supplement of El País, a leading Spanish national newspaper. It’s an article about people who decided to swap their urban lives for a rural one and the difficulties and challenges that presents. I am very proud to have been asked to be a […]
Ciudad Real
Bluethroat female (Luscinia svecica cyanecula) The Bluethroat has been a species that for some reason this year has been more visible than other years. It was rare I saw them before and then this winter…it’s a regular parade of them. Now there really shouldn’t be any reason to discuss the […]
Red Kite (Milvus migrans) It has been a distressing start to the year for our Spanish Imperial Eagles and something similar is also happening in Ireland. A ninth Red Kite has been poisoned since a re-introduction programme started in Ireland in 2007. If you are caught poisoning birds of prey […]
Water Pipit (Anthus spinoletta) We get many winter visitors from far away here in la Mancha, such as the Common Crane from far off Siberia or the Red Kite from Northern Europe. But we also get visitors from what´s called “Altitudinal Migration”. This is a seasonal movement where the change […]
Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleuchos) The Laguna de Navaseca was superb yesterday. It really is a tiny gem. Only 15km from the Tablas National Park which is beautiful, orderly and expansive, the Navaseca is small, dumpy and smelly. But that doesn´t affect anything. It always performs. It has ducks, waders, egrets, […]
Spanish Imperial Eagle – juvenile (Aquila adalberti), a photo by HibernoManchego (formerly Mike at Sea) on Flickr. Today SEO/Birdlife Spain announced what would appear to be a very bad start to the year for the extremely vulnerable Spanish Imperial Eagle. Six birds were found dead due to poisoning in la […]
Purple Gallinule [Swamphen] (Porphyrio porphyrio), a photo by Mike at Sea on Flickr. No, I´m not talking about Prince, Squiggle, Symbol or whatever he calls himself. I´m talking about one of the most electric coloured waterfowl, the Purple Swamphen or Gallinule. There are 13 or so subspecies of this bird […]
Egyptian Grasshopper – nymph (Anacridium aegyptium), a photo by Mike at Sea on Flickr. If it wasn´t for the movement of this wee, green chameleon-like grasshopper I probably would have missed it. It turns out to be a nymph form of the Egyptian Grasshopper (Anacridium augyptium). When in this earlier […]
Las Tablas, a photo by Mike at Sea on Flickr. Recently it has emerged that the waters entering the National Park of the Tablas of Daimiel are contaminated from untreated urban waste water causing widespread destruction of the aquatic plants within the park. Both the WWF and CSIC (the Higher […]
I spent the weekend out at Ruidera Natural Park on the border of Albacete and Ciudad Real and saw a lot of these sublimely coloured Violet Dropwings. Sadly I didn´t bring my camera to where I saw them as we went by canoe and my wifes P+S was set to […]