From the Heights: Vultures, Deer, and Remembering Bill

We’re back in Extremadura, Spain, because vultures and deer. Big birds like griffon vultures were easier to capture than the little birds. Do click on these; they're quite nice if you can see them at size.

I loved the griffons. We watched them for much of the day. This one is building its nest in a likely cranny.

This one may have been feeding on a bloody carcass, as its head was stained red. I wondered how so many huge vultures found enough to eat. I understand there are feeding stations where cattle are laid out for them. Knowing how vultures are suffering and declining worldwide, it’s comforting to see them being subsidized here in Extremadura.

I was grateful to see so many griffon vultures sailing by with comfortably full crops and bloodied heads.

Phoebe, Liam and I climbed to the top of a tower to see the countryside. We did a lot of that, climbing cathedral towers and castle towers, always looking for the eagle's vantage point. 

Ah my beautiful babies. How I reveled in being with them for two weeks. We never got sick of each other. That alone makes my heart sing. To see their enduring love for each other...I can paint and write for the rest of my life, but these two and that love they share is the most beautiful thing I've somehow, inexplicably produced. Had a lot of help from their big sweet crazy dad.

He would have loved showing us Extremadura. We laughed about how goal-oriented he'd have been, searching for the golden eagle, the gigantic black vulture that we somehow spotted the second we entered the park. We looked, too, but we didn't find eagles, and that was OK with us. It wouldn't have been OK with him! He was a goaly guy.

They’re somewhere out there, and that was enough for us. We didn’t have to go chasing over hill and dale to find one. We felt him with us. How could he be anywhere else? If you could see him at 20...he looked an awful lot like this beautiful boy.

You'd have to love wind to live here. Wind sculpted our hair every second.

Me, lugging all necessary optics, all the time, up hill and down dale. 

I was thoroughly encumbered. Once in awhile I'd give Liam my camera to carry, and think how lovely it would be to have a personal porter.

Gliding down, flaps lowered...I imagined my great wings carrying me like a hang-glider, my legs dangling down.

It looks like such fun to dip and dive over this landscape, to ride on the wind instead of standing around fighting it.

And then we rest...

Some of the vultures were carrying twigs and greenery for their nests, before Christmas! Seeing such a majestic and mysterious bird carrying a little sprig of greenery moved me. You could see its goal, there in its bill. It had a thought in its mind and was carrying it out.

After having seen the stag swim the river, we were thrilled to see an Iberian hind and her fawns feeding amongst scattered boulders on a hillside. This is Cervus elaphus hispanicus, the Iberian red deer.

These creatures are much larger and longer legged and lankier than our whitetail; they're very much like the Scottish red deer, which is built more on an elkish body plan. Both European red deer and American elk are in the genus Cervus. Interestingly, Cervus is a primarily Eurasian genus, and our wapiti is the only representative in North America, and certainly the largest of any Cervus worldwide. Our elk are just hyooooge compared to Iberian deer, but this is still a whole lot of animal!

I was most delighted with this shot of three running amongst the rocks; the way they're in focus but the rocks aren't. Please click on it! It looks like a diorama if you embiggen it.

That evening, an Iberian stag cut right in front of our car, and Liam grabbed the moment. December 21, the Winter Solstice, was a charmed day with my sweet family, and it wasn't over yet!

           

This post is a little Valentine to my Liam and Phoebe. Your mama is very far away at the moment, but I hope you can feel my love hurtling on clumsy wings through an Ecuadorean rainstorm, up over the Andes, over the Gulf of Mexico, up through the Appalachian chain, and dropping down into Morgantown. Then it’s picking up again, crossing the winter Atlantic, and zeroing in on a certain girl in mainland Spain right now. You can close the windows and bar the doors, but it’s coming in.

Birds and Hogs, Cranes and Dogs!

These photos were taken Dec. 21,  2019, on Liam's and my epic trip to mainland Spain to be with Phoebe and, later, Oscar and his family way out in the Canary Islands. Despite my life's barrelling on apace, I am dogged about getting this Spain stuff posted, so my kids and I will have something semi-coherent to remember the trip by. I can see by the numbers that you really prefer the day-to-day Indigo Hill reportage, and I get that. It's more accessible and personal.  I thank those of you who stick with me here on the blog as I travel a bit.  

Monfragüe National Park in Extremadura, south central Spain, is a wild and windy place. Being winter, it was also cold, though I understand it can be broiling hot in summer. We carried on despite the howling wind, and managed to see some sights and some wildlife.  

This is a very distant blue rock thrush. I'm sure in proper light it's lovely, its blue being more of a slate color. There are similar birds in South Africa.

The cork oaks in the dehesa forest are laid out so regularly you wonder if they were planted like this, or if they somehow assert their space and keep all other oaks away with root poisons. I don't know the answer to this. I've been rooting around to try to understand more about this strange oak savannah ecosystem. Suffice it to say it's probably anthropogenic in origin, and dates back thousands of years, yet it provides both for livestock and wildlife in myriad ways.

 It's an acorn-based economy! Sheep and pigs and cattle graze the grass beneath the oaks and wild olives; shepherds take the sheep, especially, to the highlands in summer, which prevents overgrazing of the dehesa plain, in a process called transhumancia. It's much like the cattle drives of the old American west, but it's still going on.

I was beyond thrilled to get a close look at a Mastin de Extremadura, and a brindle one to boot! This Spanish mastiff, a specialty of the region, was wandering out by the road, with no humans in sight, but his job is to guard the sheep. These dogs are raised with sheep from the time they're tiny; they seem to think they're sheep, and want only to be with sheep. But let someone approach their herd, and their protective nature comes out. They'll follow you with the evil eye until you give up the pursuit. And they can back it up with massive jaws and great speed.

I just couldn't get over the beauty of this dog, with a tail like a tiger's, and brindle stripes running through its long fur. I will admit to a new fascination with brindling. Not sure where that came from.

It wanted nothing at all to do with us, and retreated to the top of the bank.

There, I got a shot of its kind and gentle face. Still, not a dog to be challenged or trifled with. It's got a job to do!

I will sit here until you drive away. Please go away. I have sheep to guard.

Meanwhile, nicely rounded Iberian hogs and sheep, cattle and goats, kept in by wire and impossibly ancient mortar-free stone fences, all eat the acorns that fall from the oaks, and that  diet gives the hogs' hams their unique flavor. But they're not the only ones who eat the acorns. 

Cranes (which look like nothing unless you click on the photo) do too!

Click on the photo to see a juenile crane, with its featureless head. This was as close as we ever got to them, and they were in a hurry to right that wrong, walking off immediately.

I managed to catch a few in transit.

The hogs were pretty wild, too, come to think of it.

Cattle were more approachable.

A couple of the famous fighting bulls for which the region is known. Oscar is a born Spaniard, but he detests bullfighting, as do many of his peers. One hopes we are entering a different age, one a bit more advanced than that of the Roman emperors and their bloodlust.

There was so much to take in here that my mind was whirling the whole time. The interconnectedness of the dehesa oaks and olives; the livestock living cheek to jowl with cranes and vultures and azure-winged magpies

You may be quite sure I bemoaned my craptastic shots of these beautiful magpies. You can only see their azure if you click. Oh how I wanted to be closer, but they were too wild.

A crested lark amongst the cowpies. We loved his up-do. 

A beautiful linnet in winter plumage!

Linnet reprise.

A pair of siskins with Moorish architecture behind.

And a wood pigeon. Man, I was under-equipped in the camera realm. An 800 mm lens might have gotten something; my 300 was smoking and still I got so little. No wonder European birders flip all the way out when they come to America and especially the Neotropics. It's like a dang petting zoo compared to Extremadura. 

A confiding great tit. It was wonderful to have any bird confide in us, so skittish were they all. There aren't many bird families whose European representatives are prettier than the American species, but man, the tits in Europe are really beautiful. Insert whatever middle-school level joke you wish here _____________.  I saw long-tailed tits flying over Caceres this same evening, but getting photos of them would have been an impossible dream.

All right. I've gone on long enough. Until next time!! Olé!

Release the Hounds! (In a National Park??)

One of my greatest joys is being able to tell a story, to document something that's happened from start to finish. Sometimes it takes years to get the story. And then there are those rare moments when you see something unfolding and you have your camera ready, and you just get the story.

That said...

One of my greatest frustrations about Blogger is the way it shrinks my photos. If you click on a photo it'll give you blown-up versions of all of them. And trust me, for this post, you're gonna need to click on photos. Promise me you will. Because all this happened at a great distance, and the light was terrible, as it usually is, and I was excited, as I usually am. 

While watching the griffons, some of them spooked from their perches on the mountainside. From across the river, on the other side of the mountain, we heard gunshots and men yelling. And then we heard the chilling sound of dogs baying. Lots of dogs. 

Our unbelieving eyes discerned a pack of particolored dogs literally pouring down the flank of the mountain where the vultures perched. This seemed a very odd thing to be happening in a national park,  close to the Christmas holiday. Or anytime. What is a huge pack of dogs doing in a national park where threatened birds are nesting? 

Something in the dogs' appearance pricked at my memory. Hounds. Very fast, very lean, greyhound like forms. Sight hounds. I've got it! They're Ibizan hounds!

I've blown up a small section of my photo here so you can see what I'm talking about--the red-tan and white, graceful forms of what I believe to be Ibizan hounds. Bang! Bang! Yahhh! Still the human voices rang through the dehesa (oak forest).

As you know, I love to see a dog doing its job. I can see red trackers on these dogs' collars, which tells me they are valued animals, set out on a hunt on purpose.

I've done a little reading on Ibizan hounds. They're sight hounds who are likely little diferent from their original form of several thousand years ago. The breed, also called Podenco Ibicenco or Balaeric Dog, is derived from the pariah dogs brought from Egypt to the island of Ibiza off Spain's coast, by Phoenician traders. Because they were isolated on Ibiza, they have remained virtually unchanged for several thousand years. Seeing one is like looking at a heiroglyph!

 Once again, that antiquity thing, only this time it's expressed in flesh. In beautiful dogs. They're similar to Pharoah hounds. Here's a photo from Seattle Purebred Dogs/Shutterstock that I grabbed off the Net. Egad they're lovely animals. Unless you're an animal--any animal-- trying to live its life in Monfragüe National Park when they're loosed...I would not want to be trying to outrun this hound.

All this--what ARE those dogs?? Why are they hunting in a pack in a national park? What about the vultures? What about the Iberian lynx that are supposed live here??  is running through my head as I am striving to get photos of the little river of hounds pouring down the steep flank of the mountain.

 And as I'm shooting photos I hear a sharp clattering on the steep rocky riverbank, on the far side, below where the hounds are coursing. What in the Sam Hill? It's hooves on rock!

Through my lens, I can see it is a beautiful Iberian deer, a stag, and he's running for his very life. Into the frigid river he plunges, without hesitation.

And he begins to swim.

Who can blame him, as the shots and yells ring out behind him? As the hounds get ever closer?

Liam, Phoebe and I watch and marvel as he swims, slender legs churning underwater, being swept by the current, but making headway nonetheless.
Animals and birds continually do things I cannot even contemplate. Heroic, impossible things.

All told, by the timestamps on my photos, it took him about eight minutes to make the crossing. You can be sure it felt like forever to us. I'd have drowned in the first 50 feet.

 Liam ran down the observation walk to get a better perspective on the stag when he came out--I was blocked by trees--and yelled to me to hurry over. I hugged my big camera and ran over as fast as I could, and managed to get him just as he emerged from the river. Hooray! He made it!

A beautiful stag lives to see another day. I shared my photos with the kind Belgian birder who showed us the griffon nest. Our respective situational awareness and sharing wound up benefiting us all.

 I am exhilarated, having caught the hunters and the hunted, and seen a magnificent stag escape to safety. But I am also angry to have witnessed this in a national park. What is the meaning of a park, anyway, if this kind of indiscriminate hunting still goes on here?

Monfragüe is home not only to the griffons, black vultures and black storks, but to a few Iberian lynx, known to be one of the most critically endangered felines in the world.  Little wonder, given the amount of predator "control"  that goes on in Spain.

Lynx ex situ (i.e. captive) CNRLI/ICNF, taken from SmithsonianMagazine.com

Apparently this hunting with dogs is legal in the park. Let that sink in for a bit. Though lynx were legally protected in Spain in 1973, they are still being shot. And snaring and trapping goes on. Coursing with hounds is about the most indiscriminate kind of hunting one could do, and I understand that a radio-collared Iberian lynx was recently run out of Monfragüe by hounds. Great. Forced out of the habitat set aside for it. Well, it's not protected in the park, either, with this kind of hunting going on.

Our thrilling chase and escape story ends on a somber note. How could the Spanish government possibly justify such activities within a national park? 

Well, we don't set the best example for anyone to follow, with our Lands of Many Uses. Cattle grazing, clearcutting and oil/gas exploration and drilling, anyone?  

On a more hopeful note, here's an October 2019 article from Smithsonian that cites a spectacularly successful captive breeding and release program for Iberian lynx that has brought their numbers from around 100 to more than 700 animals since 2002! Cats do love to breed, and that is working in their favor, thank goodness!

Lynx ex situ (i.e. captive) CNRLI/ICNF, taken from SmithsonianMagazine.com

 Lynx have been reintroduced to an area about 7x the size of their shrunken range at the start of conservation efforts. Furthermore, their survival percentages once released have far exceeded expectations. Let's hear it for an endangered cat that is doing everything it can to stay with the living,

Ibizan hounds, yahoos with guns and all. 

Lynx ex situ (i.e. captive) CNRLI/ICNF, taken from SmithsonianMagazine.com

Just look at that coat pattern! What a beautiful beast! And so very different from our Canada lynx. A lot bobcattier.

Read about the heartening rebound of Iberian lynx at Smithsonian Magazine's site.

I was so excited to have documented both the hunt and the stag's escape that I pretty much grinned and jabbered for the rest of the afternoon. Liam would lean over and ask, "So...did you get the pictures, Ma?" And then the kids would both laugh at me.

Yes I did, punk. And I got a few of you, too. I like this one with the landscape lines all converging on your head, like you're having a mind-blowing moment amidst the lichens.