www.naturetrek.co.uk Natural history specialist Naturetrek, offers a 5-day tour to a little-known and very rural corner of north-eastern Spain offering Europe’s best opportunity to see wild wolves in the hills, Common Cranes and Great Bustards on the plains, departing London 13th, 17th, 21st and 25th March 2007.
The Cordillera Cantلbrica and its outlying ranges hold the vast majority of Spain’s 2,500 to 3,000 Wolves and are the stronghold of the species in Europe. The Wolf population has increased markedly since an estimated all-time low of just 500 individuals in 1970. Looking for Wolves requires a great deal of persistence, patience, stealth and luck, but this tour offers Europe’s best opportunity for success.
The area of focus on this tour is a region of rolling hills and broad valleys, sprawling oak woodlands and ancient grazing meadows enclosed by tumbledown dry stone walls offering excellent opportunities to scan a wide expanse of open land. En route to and from the hills a detour will be made to a very special area of rolling agricultural land. Here, low level intensity farming is practised specifically to encourage bird life, especially the Great Bustard.
This bleak yet charming landscape, dotted with traditional farming villages each dominated by giant churches with statutory Storks’ nests adorning each imposing bell tower, is home to vast numbers of Great Bustards plus a multitude of other species including flocks of Common Cranes, Greylag Geese and Golden Eagle. Whilst Wolves may prove elusive… the Bustards are everywhere! |