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!

Churches and Birds--So Much to Love

As tourists, it's hard for us to go inside the buildings we so admire from the outside. We are outside people. 

But we ducked into a few cathedrals on our pilgrimage to Spain, and were richly rewarded. 

Cold, drafty, echoey and awe-inspiring,  Santa Maria Mayor, Trujillo's great cathedral, with original paintings stacked up as high as you could see. It was likely built atop a mosque around the 13th century, which in turn had been built atop a Visigoth temple (5th-8th century).  My head is spinning, how's yours? It's that antiquity thing...I have no way to comprehend it. 

The ribbed vault was added in the 16th century, so I'm guessing the paintings are from the 1500's, too.

The paintings are by Fernando Gallego, and they're set in incredibly ornate gilded wood frames. I can't even imagine how this stuff survives the centuries without burning down, but it does, and that's just one thing to be grateful for. The level and meticulousness of curation of these treasures is staggering. It was this cathedral whose tower we climbed in the previous post. Our Air BnB host, Carlos, works at the cathedral, and it was he who heard our voices in the empty street, stuck his head out its great wooden doors, and told us to come in and take a look at the cathedral, on the house! 

We climbed the tower, as chronicled in the previous post, and wandered little roads on the outskirts of the village.

Evening came too soon, and the Christmas lights illuminated the narrow streets, so beautifully cobbled and shining with rain. 

We peeked in the windows of a museum, where there were myriad old tools and vessels. Who even knows how old they are? Recalibrating...

Spain does nativities up right. We saw some really beautiful nativities, including depictions of the entire town of Bethlehem and its outskirts. Setting these dioramas up in churches seems to be a holiday thing, and people were bringing their kids to see them. 

This scene of Bethlehem covered probably the size of a couple pool tables. It was amazing. 

I'm cheating a bit--this one was in the walled city of Caceres.  But you get the idea. Fabulous. The figures were maybe 7" tall.

Having steeped ourselves in the true meaning of Christmas, we did a little frippery around the edges.

This Trujillo bakery, family owned since 1939 (antiquity I can get behind), was the bomb-diggity. We made a little box of goodies to take back to the apartment. Yum! It was so nice to have homemade stuff when we were so far from home. Cookies. That's the thing when you're traveling!

We found a bulk-food store with the most beautiful teas and beans. We bought some exotic rooibos which I am enjoying right now.

Oh these BEANS!! Grown in Asturias, a province (state?) Phoebe has recently visited. That hospital-green color!! I can't stand it. It's too beautiful. My bathroom is painted this shade, only darker. I may borrow this color for another room.

I suspect this "espagueti" (these espaguetis?) has (have)  been colored with squid ink. Can't imagine what else they'd use. I understand that squid ink can stain your teeth and turn your poop black. It's got a rich briny flavor. I'd like to try it! Always up for an experiment, especially one that requires Science Chimpy follow-up.

My kind of shop. Textures and colors and photo ops galore!

The next morning, we headed to Monfragüe National Park, about a half hour from Trujillo. On the outskirts of town, we spotted a colorful flock of Eurasian goldfinches, a bird I had been dying to get a look at. Well, this was all the look we got. They were in constant motion and spooky as hell. We chased them until we realized we were never going to see them sitting still. If you click on the photo you'll see one's red face mask in the lower right corner. I was so hoping for a good shot of one.  On to the park!

We hadn't gotten far when we spotted an enormous bird circling alone in the leaden sky. I am so thankful we jumped out of the car and gave it a really good look. 

Try as I might, I couldn't pick up any color on the head or body other than black. The wedge-shaped tail seemed like a good mark, as did the perfectly flat wing profile. 

Of course, my field guide was inaccessible. I was talking a mile a minute to myself, winging the ID.

"Kids, I do believe this is our first black vulture." (Not in the least the same thing as our New World black vulture Coragyps atratus, the Eurasian black vulture Aegypius monachus is Europe's largest raptorial bird. Its range in Europe is virtually limited to Extremadura in Spain, with a couple of Mediterranean sites. Then it occurs much farther east. It is rare, very rare, dwindled in Europe to perhaps 1,000 pairs, all of them in Extremadura. They don't nest until they're 6, if that tells you anything. Black vultures do life slowly. This would be the only one we would see. Bird every bird. 

What an honor, what a privilege to see a black vulture, especially on such a crummy day for soaring! We quickly learned to look hard at every single bird we saw, because birds were scarce and each one was going to be a lifer for all of us.

Here are those famous Iberian hogs, grazing and looking for acorns beneath cork oaks. And to the left are a couple of cranes. Europe got there first, so they named their crane Crane. No modifier. Just Crane. Grus grus. 
To our disappointment, the cranes were terribly wary and began walking off as soon as our car stopped. This was a theme throughout our Spanish visit. The birds of Extremadura operate on an entirely different approachability scale than do the birds of the New World.
I was glad I brought my scope, for what fleeting looks we got at the cranes. I suspected that these birds, from cranes down to the tiniest songbirds, have been hunted, hunted long and hunted hard, to behave the way they do. The Mediterranean flight corridor is the cruelest of all. People, especially in Malta and Gozo, are still shooting, netting and trapping wild birds to eat, and they should have stopped that horrible nonsense centuries ago. Yet their government supports it, with a "legal limit" of 16,000 rare and protected migratory birds to be killed every year. It's absolutely hideous. You can learn more and help stop it with BirdLife Malta here. 

Perhaps the most common raptor we observed was the gloriously beautiful red kite. Again, it was very difficult to get close enough to get a decent shot, but every once in awhile one would pop up over our car and I'd fire quickly out the window.

One of the famous black fighting bulls for which Extremadura is known. Such a classic outline. We saw some, but not as many as I'd been led to expect. Most of the cattle we saw were cream-colored or brown, and seemed to be raised for meat.

If you look closely, you'll see some griffon vultures sailing over the cork-oak dotted landscape. They are fed on cow carcasses at certain places, which certainly helps keep them healthy, and around.

It was griffon vultures who gave us our biggest birding thrill, after the lone black vulture. At last, a bird that didn't seem to mind being looked at. I don't know what immunity from persecution griffons enjoy, but they were tolerant of my camera and our admiring eyes, and for that I'm grateful. What cool birds. Huge birds. Fairy-tale birds. Vultures have taken an enormous hit, from habitat loss; from poisoning in India (eating cow carcasses contaminated with the arthritis painkiller Diclofenac); and poisoning and shooting in Africa (poachers kill them so they don't betray the location of carcasses). I'm so glad these beautiful, majestic vultures seem to be thriving in Monfragüe National Park. More on them next post!