I booked a wildlife trip to Spain with Wild Aperture, a wildlife tour company run by Tracey Lund, an award winning wildlife photographer. I've travelled with Tracey before and was hugely looking forward to this trip.
It was a long trip getting there - Tracey collected me mid morning and with travel to the airport, flight (with delay) and onward transfer to our hotel we were all tired by the time we arrived at our destination south of Madrid.
Batteries charged, lots of memory - here we go. An early start to be in our hide before sunrise and eagerly anticipating the first lynx of the day. Two sessions during the day produced a lot of birds, some of which I hadn't seen before, but no lynx. This is real wildlife Tracey reminded us.
The next morning and we were in a different hide and had only been set up a short while when a male lynx walked in front of the hide, started drinking and sat for a while. He looked at the glass on the hide front and surely thought to himself "this doesn't quite look right but I can't figure it out". Anyway he sat for a while before walking away. A short time later he came back across and calmly just walked through the scene before disappearing behind some rocks. That was our only sighting until the very last day, just after we had packed up and we caught a glimpse of a kit having a drink under a tree in the middle of a field. Too dark for a camera but the human eye is amazing so at least we saw it. It was the same kit that Tracey and her friend Julia photographed in their hide when Dave and I had the male on the second morning.
Thanks very much to Wild Aperture for a superb break - can't wait for the next trip.
Here's some images from the holiday.
