SURPRISE PACKAGES IN GREDOS

The site.

Last Sunday, on a recommendation made by our friend Santi Villa, we tried out another site in Gredos. And what a site it turned out to be!! All the normal high-mountain stuff was still very active, singing away and giving amazing views from atop rocks, Broom scrub and telegraph wires. Especially obliging were the wonderful Bluethroats, which I was able to photograph right from the roadside

We also saw Alpine Pipits, a Tawny Pipit, Whitethroats (a very high density), Spectacled Warbler, Yellow Wagtail, Ortolan Buntings, etc. Here’s a snapshot of a Whitethroat.



This Wheatear, otherwise quite shy as a species, came close enough for me to get a semi decent snap.

Skylarks never stopped trilling high in the sky.

We saw a total of 8 Rock Thrushes, also quite shy and never coming very close. Two males once sat side by side quite amicably on the cables and then one of them attacked a nearby female, as you can see in the photo.

The big surprise came as soon as we arrived at dawn, when we heard first the tick-tock song of a Snipe and then saw him drumming overhead, the first we’ve ever seen breeding in Spain. I believe these to be the most southerly breeding snipes in the whole of Europe. Truth is it seem really weird to be hearing drumming snipes, so many of which we’d heard a couple of years ago in the Shetlands, in the same site with such Mediterranean species as Rock Thrush, etc. We even managed to get this shot of it flying overhead.

Another surprise came when we found a male Red-Backed Shrike at a height of 1909 m but it didn’t give us a chance to photograph it.

We also found these orchids, which we think are Robust March Orchids, Dactylorhiza etala subsp. sesquipedalis. If any blog visitor could confirm this identification we’d be grateful.

Already dead chuffed with the morning’s birding, we were on the way down the mountain when this wonderful Ocellated Lizard slithered into view to give us the last snap of the day.