Birding in Extremadura gets off to a flying start
Our Birdwatching in Extremadura gets off to a flying start!
Our group all met up at Madrid airport and we collected our comfortable minibus. Braving the rather chaotic roads around Madrid, we finally left the busy capital traffic behind us and headed south down the motorway towards Extremadura.
Our exciting Spanish birding started almost immediately as we saw a flock of 40 Common Cranes heading in the opposite direction migrating north! Such wonderful charismatic birds, wonder if any of these birds will visit the UK?
We broke our journey at a lovely area of wetlands and started racking up plenty of brilliant new birds for our trip! The wonderful thing about wetland areas is that they hold plenty of birds all busily going about their business including Great White Egret, Purple Gallinules, Glossy Ibis and Kingfisher.
Purple Gallinule amongst the reeds
Glossy Ibis probes the damp grassland
We saw lots of White Storks about and Zitting Cisticola and Sardinian Warbler were close by as was a smart Southern Grey Shrike and even Great Spotted Cuckoo put in an appearance.
White Stork
More White Storks
Southern Grey Shrike
Even as we drove along we enjoyed more brilliant birds including two Black-shouldered Kites, as well as plenty of Black Kites and Red Kite too.
We arrived at our cosy and comfortable country hotel to a very warm welcome from Martin and Claudia, and a delicious supper. If this was the level of birding on a driving day, we couldn't wait to get going the next day!
If you'd like more information about our next trip to Extremadura or any of our other guided birdwatching tours and daytrips in North Wales, across the UK and further afield, please email us on
info@thebiggesttwitch.com for more information. We look forward to hearing from you!