Today we headed to the Belegua Valley, my favourite place here. As we passed through Isaba we saw both Grey and White Wagtail. At the first viewpoint up the mountain there were Griffon Vultures above, but none of the usual House Martins as the actual house they nested on seems to have gone, which is a pity. As we drove on I spotted a raptor above so we pulled into a handy lay-by. The bird was hovering and I was jumping up and down yelling Short-toed Eagle! John saw it too and we were very happy to see this special species, and my favourite Eagle.
We stopped in the lay-by above the refugio as we had spotted an Egyptian Vulture flying over. It soon flew off but John spotted another bird in the area in front of us and called it as a Lammergeier, before doubting himself. As I got the bins on the bird I could see it was definitely a Lammergeier (now renamed Bearded Vulture I believe). It had the distinctive wedge tail which John had spotted and I could see the ginger coloured body underneath. We watched the bird flying around the area and it landed for a few minutes and appeared to be eating something. We had amazing views of this spectacular bird for around 15 minutes in total. A group of Red-billed and Alpine Chough then appeared and were mobbing it and the bird soon flew out of sight. Happy days! Apologies for the terrible photos but you get the idea!
We moved on to the area by the bridge but unfortunately the usual Citril Finches were not around. Further on there were only Alpine Chough in the cave where previously there had been Red-billed Chough, which seemed odd.
Stopping on our way back down at the big car park there were lots of small birds around including Stonechat and some Pipits which the Merlin App said were Tree Pipit. Two birds landed on a small tree, one was a Linnet and the other, which I only saw from the back, appeared to be a Citril Finch. Sadly they were flushed when my hat blew off in a gust of wind!
Driving back towards the refugio, we saw a Kestrel flying and another, or the same, Short-toed Eagle hovering. Brilliant!
Back at the refugio car park we had lunch and saw more Chough of both kinds flying around and a single Wheatear showed briefly on top of a rock.
Heading back to Anso we took the road across to Zuriza and again saw the pair of Red-backed Shrike from yesterday. Three Buzzards were seen having some sort of altercation in the same area.
