Wednesday 27th to Saturday 30th May.
We started our trip to the Pyrenees with a couple of nights in a hotel near Madrid. Unfortunately, this coincided with extreme temperatures of around 35° which was too hot for us to venture into the city. We did pick up a couple of species for my list as Swifts and Monk Parakeets were seen around the hotel grounds, and we had a surprising sighting of two Griffon Vultures flying over.
We moved on to Zaragoza for another night in a hotel before heading for the Pyrenees. As usual our first new birds were Black Kite and White Stork around Zaragoza. We also saw Common Buzzard, Red Kite, Kestrel and Griffon Vultures (c100 near Sabinago) from the car. A short stop in Jaca found us watching a group of House Martins busy collecting mud for their nests from a puddle in the moat of the citadel. We walked round the outside of the fort hearing Nightingales singing from the bushes.
We arrived at our accommodation in Anso at 2.30 and a Swallow was singing on a wire below our balcony. It continued to fly up and down our street at speed. A Red Kite flew over the village and a pair of Black Redstarts were moving around on the roof tops. In the evening several Swifts were flying over the village with our second floor apartment giving us great views of them.
