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Canamero & Esparragosa de Lares Extremadura, Spain, June 2026 6 to 13 June By Stephen Burch, England Introduction This trip to central Spain follows two previous visits, firstly in May 2025 and then in February 2026. For all these trips my focus has been on bird photography from various photo (pay) hides. On my recent trip in February, Luis, the owner of the Hides Villuercas, showed me a photo of a daytime Eagle Owl that he had obtained previously from one of his hides later in the season. This, combined with the failure to connect with Golden Eagle, prompted me to plan a swift return visit. With another commitment in May on Shetland, I agreed with him on a follow-up visit in early June, which he said would be "perfect" timing. Another key target he mentioned was Black-winged Kite, as he had a hide for these as well. However, when I actually arrived in June in Canamero, he confirmed that the Eagle Owl wasn't showing, probably because of failed breeding due to poor late winter/early spring weather. Also he had been unsuccessful in getting any Golden Eagles to return to a different hide. Not only that, but it was too late for the Black-winged Kites that had already finished nesting! So on the first night of this trip things weren't looking good, with none of my key targets available! However, the next morning, Luis reminded me that he had a friend, based about one hour's drive away, who had hides said to be reliable for Eagle Owl and Golden Eagle! So I spent some time on my second morning sorting out an abrupt change of plan. This involved spending two nights in another Casa Rural, in the remote small village of Esparragosa de Lares, more of which see below. There was also an unexpected bonus in that his friend had a hide for Golden Oriole at which activity was said to be high at present! General For the outward flight, the aircraft was upgraded to a wide-bodied Boeing 777. Departure was from a B gate at Heathrow T5, which entails a train ride. On arrival, it also docked at a gate, rather having to descend the aircraft steps and get on a tiresome bus, as happened previously On the return the aircraft had reverted to the usual smaller model (Airbus A320, I think) but happily again buses were not needed on departure or arrival at Heathrow. In advance I had been in considerable trepidation regarding the possibility of long queues caused by the EU's wonderful new EES system, especially as this trip was getting more towards the peak summer travel season than the last one in February. However although the banks of machines were again largely inactive or broken down, neither arrival nor departure took too long - mainly I think because there were many more manned passport control booths then in February! On arrival I was also fortunate to be invited to use one of the banks of idle machines which worked absolutely fine and took hardly any time at all! Transport from/to
Madrid airport For the outward drive from the airport to Canamero (about 3 hrs), on a Saturday evening, and with the late sunset at this time of year, I was able to reach Canamero in daylight. Google Maps showed three alternative routes, all with about the same time. I chose the longest one, to keep on the dual carriageway as far as possible to minimise the amount of driving on small winding roads. Being a Saturday, before the school holidays started, traffic was light. On my return from Canamero at the end of the week, on the Friday night I stopped overnight at a hotel en-route called Hostal Restaurante Casa Isabel in Gamonal (near to Talavera de la Reina where i have stayed previously) which I booked via Booking.com. This was OK as a one night stop, and from all the cars around next morning was clearly a popular place for travellers. The food for dinner was however no great shakes. Returning to Madrid early on Saturday morning the traffic was quite quiet but I still allowed plenty of time given the potential for EES delays on departure. As for my last trip, I aimed for a Repsol filling station close to the airport, about here, approximately 3 km from the required return point. However unlike in February, I had come round Madrid the other way, and was approaching the filling station from the airport side. At one point I must have missed a turn and ended up going through the departures drop off zone for taxis, by mistake! I was fearing the worst about this, but so far no fines have arrived from SixT, so fingers crossed! If approaching from this side again, a different petrol station would be better. There is reputed to be one adjacent to, or even in, Terminal 4, but I haven't found it yet! Weather Click to enlarge any of the photos below. There is a also a separate galley with additional photoss Hides Villuercas The main hides that Luis operated were very impressive large solid wooden constructions reflecting his profession as a carpenter. Also they had built-in toilets but did not have shelves, so I brought a tripod.
Casa Rural el Taller de Benito For dinner, there were two main restaurants in town, very close to each other. The first was more popular and had few if any tables free when I walked past so I ended up at the nearby Hotel Rural Villa De Cañamero, which is where I went in February. This was OK food wise and had a menu on-line that could be studied (and translated) at my leisure in advance. Note this is rural Spain without many tourists and so I expected dinner to be only served from about 21:00, as is the Spanish custom. However, I found I could push this a little forward to 20:45 sometimes. Bonelli's
Eagle Hide The main attraction here were Bonelli's Eagles, which come into large rocks at the edge of the plateau. Importantly though Luis also puts out meal worms much closer to bring in small birds - Blue Rock Thrush, Black Redstart, Sardinian and Dartford Warbler. There was however a key problem that plagued virtually all the hides on this trip. In early June this unprecedented summer of drought and heat was just getting underway in Spain, although I understand May was also much hotter than normal. Hence with uninterrupted blue skies and the high sun angle, the light was very harsh. This required a lot of Photoshop processing to try to bring out some details in the dark shadows but there are limits to this process. At this hide, the morning sun is coming from the right (not ideal), not from behind the hide. This ruined all the many small bird photos I took, and I have not processed any of them this time. In contrast, in February, even though it was sunny, the light was much less harsh. Although harsh light affected all the hides to some extent, its effects seemed worst at this hide for some reason, probably due to all the pale rocks and the sun being to the right, not fully behind the hide. In February, only the male Bonelli's Eagle came in but this time, both came in, with the male first. Each stayed for about half an hour. As before, there were some some brief opportunities for action shots when the birds moved between the rocks and also onto/from a wooden branch. This time the female landed first on the highest flat rock, directly opposite the hide, and I then got a good sequence of shots of it flying, almost at right angles to the camera, down onto the next rock along to the right.
Booted
Eagle Hide After something of a wait, the eagle came in mid morning without warning very low and fast onto the rocky perch a little below the hide. I was distracted at the time, and there was in any case little chance of a good incoming shot. It then stayed for the better part of two hours, slowly devouring the pigeon bait. For almost all this time, the bird was standing on its prey, which is something I am not that keen on. Only right at the end, shortly before it flew off, did it move off the carcass onto a "clean" piece of rock. When it departed is flew down from the perch directly away from the hide, so no chance of action shots. However it then circled back, and even landed again briefly on the perch, with its back to the hide. So no action shots then either. I did however get one shot of it in flight which was OK, but would have been better if I had remembered to zoom back in on the flying bird! Unlike the Bonelli's Eagle hide, there were no other photo opportunities here. As usual the session finished around mid day, although Luis was a little late, as he tended to be.
Vulture Hide After a while, all I had seen was one or two close fly overs and more very distant vultures over the ridges. So I was beginning to fear a no show like in February. But then several vultures all descended fast onto some rocks on the ridge well to the right of the hide. I thought that maybe they had found a dead animal or other food source there. However in fact it seems it was prelude to a mass arrival in front of the hide! A large number of incoming birds then appeared, so I tried to get as many incoming shots as I could in a short space of time, using a short focal length (about 200mm)! Afterwards, I was pleased to find I had captured a Black Vulture as well as numerous Griffons. A feeding scrum of about 20-30 Griffon Vultures then quickly formed only a few metres away right in front of me! This wasn't ideal from the photo point of view, but I then noticed a couple of the rarer Black Vultures on periphery of the "scrum" that formed better targets. According to Luis, his trail cam also showed an Egyptian Vulture on the ground but behind the main scrum from the hide, which explains why I never saw it. All this action lasted only about 15 mins, after which time all the meat had gone and the birds began to drift off down the slope away from the hide. As this was happening an Egyptian Vulture flew over low down but didn't land. After that it was a matter of waiting for the midday collection by Luis, with little else to photograph. The odd passing Red-rumped Swallow presented some possibilities, but were very difficult to get onto and too distant.
After being collected by Luis, I headed back to his Rural House to collect the car, and then set Google Maps to Esparragosa de Lares and carefully extricated myself from Canamero. The very narrow streets can be extremely challenging for modern cars, and after some issues in February I made sure to check with Luis which was the best way out!. After a very rural drive of about an hour, seeing various White Storks en-route (clearly a very common bird in rural Spain), I arrived at my destination for the next two nights. Esparragosa de Lares
Casa Rural Restaurante El Paraíso Golden Eagle Hide So shortly after dawn, we were installed in the hide and Rafael departed having told us the Golden Eagle can come in any time after about 09:00 and usually appears first on a distant pylon to the right. There was then something of a wait. There was some entertainment, but without any worthwhile photos, provided by a Hoopoe, Iberian Grey Shrike and even a vivid green Ocellated Lizard. This would climb up to the meat put out for the eagle and then fall off the perch trying to reach it! It did this several times, so it was clearly not harmed by this strange behaviour. Eventually I spotted a distant large bird on the indicated pylon which was a promising sign. Sometime later we noticed it had departed but there was still no sign of it at the hide. However, just when we weren't expecting it, in it came onto a rocky perch to the right, just as Rafael said it should! This was my first close encounter with this magnificent raptor and it was amazing to see one so close. All my previous sightings of this species have been very distant ones in Scotland and elswhere. It was surprising that this part of Spain is not particularly mountainous, and the hide wasn't even up in the hills. We then enjoyed the eagle for about half an hour as it made its way from one perch to the next. I even managed some flight shots of it as it went from the second to the third and last perch. So a great and memorable encounter, despite the increasing heat in the hide! I found afterwards that shimmer from the heat had affected my photos, even at the relatively short distances to this bird. However I had taken a large numbers of shots, as I usually do, and going through them all there were usually one or two shots that were relatively sharp.
Eagle Owl Eagle Hide We were then driven back to a location near the Golden Eagle hide, but a steep climb was needed up a narrow path to reach the Eagle Owl Hide. For this session, Rafael stayed with us the whole time, and adjusted the settings on his sophistical 5 flash system. Initially he set it for fill flash around dusk and then later complete flash when it was completely dark. We were told repeatedly that being quiet here was very important, so there was no talking having left the car, until our return. For the flash system, as far as I could work out, the two photographers were sharing the same system, so only slow speed shooting with a maximum of 4 shots in a burst were allowed. This made it very difficult to get any action shots, but I did get extraorinarily lucky capturing one of the owls in flight, right in the centre of the field of view as it descended down onto a perch. Eagle Owls came in 3 times while we were there. Importantly the first visit was at dusk, with enough ambient light left to allow a low level of fill flash for the bird itself, which was just as well as the background, looking over the plain beyond, was very bright. Even for the second visit there was a little natural light left, which could be increased either by lowering the shutter speed, or in post processing. Rafael called in a night around 23:00 and we carefully made our way down the steep, narrow track using head torches. I found this descent rather more challenging than the ascent in daylight but managed to get down in one piece with no falls or slips.
Golden Oriole Hide In advance, Rafael had said that activity was current good at this hide, and indeed it was! There were Golden Orioles in various plumages coming and going for as long as the food lasted (grapes on wires!). There were also visits from Azure-winged Magpies and even a Blue Rock Thrush (once, very briefly). But it was the orioles that were the stars of the show, especially the brilliant yellow, fully mature males. There were also many individuals that were either females or sub-adult males; I couldn't distinguish between these two reliably. For this session I took a huge number of shots, trying to get the best possible poses. I also used pre-capture all the time, and tried for flight shots with this from time to time. At around 10:30, all the grapes had gone and the activity dropped right off. Fortunately, Rafael was close by and collected me without delay. This allowed me to return to the apartment, pack everything up, and drive back to Canamero, just in time a late lunch.
Back at Hides Villuercas
(one night & one hide) Dipper Hide As the morning wore on, it very quickly became clear that there was no activity at the nest. Calling Luis about this, he said it was likely the birds would be back in the vicinity at some point as they don't usually go far. However this wasn't the case, and the only bird I saw was one or two immature tatty Grey Wagtails! However, I wasn't too unhappy as the rocky pool had some interesting dragonflies. They would land on some of the many rocks around and in the pool. I wasn't able to get as close as I would have liked, but I spent the time trying for both settled and flight shots (which were very challenging due to their speed). This was a species I was unfamiliar with and by using my phone it was clear it was a species of Pincertail. On the basis of my back of the camera photos, Google lens suggested Lesser Pincertail as did Google AI given information on location, habitat etc. But on returning home, looking closely at the photos, I suspected this was the more local and very similar Large Pincertail. This was subsequently confirmed by Adrian Parr of the BDS, to whom many thanks. So I dipped on the Dippers at the Dipper Hide!
Summary Over all sessions, I again took a huge number of photos (c. 30,000) and my light weight laptop and two 4 Tb external SSD drives for backup worked very well. Will I be back? Well I am already thinking about another trip in May next year, which would hopefully allow me to connect with Luis' Black-winged Kites. Rafael at Esparragosa de Lares also told me he has Montagu's Harrier and Roller hides... All very tempting targets! © All pictures copyright Stephen Burch |
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