Valencia '23

It was a Big Birthday which needed a bit of celebrating so the only appropriate thing to do was to travel to Valencia to photograph birds of prey.

The first hide visited was targeting Goshawk. I'd never seen one before so excitement levels were high. The rules of the hide were extremely strict - no exposed skin (so we had to wear gloves and scarves over our faces), no phones (because of the light they kick out) and no using the back of the camera screen (because of the light they kick out). And to make it even more fun, there were even trail cameras pointing at the hide to make sure we were behaving ourselves.

We got into the hide before dawn, but fortunately / unfortunately did not have long to wait. We heard the Goshawks calling very early and the male arrived soon after. It was way too early to be taking photos though. The female arrived about 20 minutes after the male. It was still too dark for great photos but some high ISO snaps were still possible.

And then we got lucky! Another female turned up, and buzzed the feeding pair. The male took off and chased after her and the female stopped feeding and started mantling her prey instead. This went on for quite some time. This meant that the female stuck around a bit, enough time for the sun to come up a bit more and for us to get some more detailed shots.

The next day was the Bonelli's Eagle hide and again I had never seen one of these. It was a much more relaxed affair, getting into the hide at ~9AM and without such strict rules - although it was mentioned that following them anyway would improve our chances.

A bit like the Goshawk, the male was first on the scene - easily identified by his pale yellow eyes. Amusingly he got tormented by a wasp. Shortly after the female started circling above and he departed. The female is bigger (as is normal with raptors) but also has brown eyes. She was very happy to show us a few different poses, including one where she looked almost pensive, like she was contemplating the rabbit she was about to eat.

We finished off the trip with a couple of days in downtown Valencia where we saw lots of warblers and an obliging Cattle Egret.

If you would like to visit these hides yourself you can enquire here: turiahides.com.