Temperatures are unbearably hot in the centre of Spain in August. The people of Madrid leave for the coast or the mountains, fleeing the stifling city. The Sierra de Gredos to the west of Madrid is a popular summer retreat, but little known outside Spain. This hunting forest, once reserved for the personal use of the dictator General Franco, was made a nature reserve, then a regional park. It sits on the border between two powerful regions, Extremadura and Castilla y Leon.
The stark granite peaks were formed more than 300 million years ago. Glacial action and water have sculpted today’s landscape, forming great lakes, tumbling river gorges and a land strewn with boulders as large as houses. The Gredos is among the best places to see wild birds anywhere in Spain and that means anywhere in Europe. More than 140 species are found, including good populations of eagles, falcons, hawks and vultures. The rare black vulture and occasional Egyptian vultures breed here, as do white and black storks.
We climbed through the pine-clad foothills towards a more open gorse and juniper-covered ridge as the sun mellowed as it sunk towards the horizon. Above us, a red kite quartered the hillside, using its sharply angled wings and V-shaped tail to give it pin-point precision as it sought carrion and small lizards.
Further along the ridge, griffon vultures were collecting. We counted more than 100 birds. Here, the evening sun would give them one last upward boost so that they could make the 50 mile journey southwest to the Monfrague National Park to roost on the cliffs away from harm.
These birds travel great distances in search of carcasses and safe places to roost and are supremely well designed for flight. The vultures we watched launched themselves, one by one, off the ridge behind us. Plummeting towards us, their wings were initially tightly swept back for speed. Once moving fast, they opened their wings to the full 9ft extent just above our heads, soaring upwards on the thermals pushing hard up against the ridge.
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Now in full glide mode they gathered high on the thermals, ready for their long-distance flight. We set off down the hill towards our camp site exhilarated by one of the greatest wildlife spectacles Europe can offer.
Peak condition
This week a special family of birds took to the air above a patch of leggy heather on a Peak District moor. Three hen harrier chicks fledged successfully, granting cautious joy to those of us anxious for their future.
When the population is scant, every chick counts. It’s pitiful that the English population is so small (just in double figures), but this new family should now be the cornerstone of a growing and secure Peak District population.
Significantly, these birds have been raised on a “walked-up” grouse moor, where habitat and management are more amenable to birds of prey than more intensive “driven” moors, where birds are beaten towards the guns. On my recent visit, I watched a handsome male harrier slip from high above a ridge towards the nest site. The female swept up to engage in that most loving hen harrier habit of exchanging food on the wing.
Hen harrier conservation in the Peak District is about upholding the law and stamping out the tradition of persecution. But it’s also about changing hearts and minds. Much credit this year goes to the National Trust, on whose moors both peregrine and hen harrier have bred successfully.
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Ranger danger
Conservation conflicts in the UK generate much angst and heated debated. Egos and reputations are often bruised, but rarely does this lead to much real personal harm. Sadly, in other parts of the world that is often not the case.
The pressures on park managers protecting precious stocks of threatened wildlife such as elephant, rhino, lion and tiger have been properly highlighted but we should also think of the frontline rangers whose day-to-day work is to confront violent and armed poachers in remote game reserves.
Reports from the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo are that more than 100 elephants have been killed since May. Heavily armed poachers have killed two rangers in the DRC in 2014, adding to a toll of more than 35 park rangers murdered worldwide.
I have great admiration for Sean Willmore, the Australian founder of the Thin Green Line Foundation, whose work supports rangers in the field. The foundation’s focus is on training, equipment and encouragement.
Sadly, a growing part of its work is providing financial aid to the widows and orphans of those brutally murdered by poachers.