Magnus Elander – Serra de Beaumort, Spain I

The mission started out of Girona in Catalunya on Nov 5. The airport that Ryanair calls Barcelona North. My assistant Stefan Strandbergh and myself headed out in a heavy-duty 4WD, absolutely necessary to negotiate the winding dirtroads in both the low and the high Pyrenees. The main focus for the next two weeks would be Lammergeiers and Griffon Vultures. En route we passed the towns Vic and Ripoll and drove through the 5 km long Tunel del Cadi. At sunset just south of La Seu D’Urgell we met the first Griffon. After a few shots to warm up the memory card we moved on in the evening darkness via Sort to Gerri de la Sal in the Serra de Boumort to spend the night. My friend and private guide Julian Gayarre from Pamplona met up and talked enthusiastically about what he had prepared for us.

Next morning Steve West from birdinginspain.com joined in to take us to a private feeding site for vultures. Steve turned out to be invaluable with his more than 20 years of experience to satisfy birders and bird photographers in northern Spain. The feeding station is run by Jordi Canut, mainly to catch Lammergeier for scientific purposes and to put on radio transmitters. To improve my photographic success Steve West had built a small (very small) hide from a standard green garbage bin that he had turned upside down.
Steve explained that the vultures got very nervous if they saw big lenses moving. That’s why he put in a mirror glass (spy glass) on the front side of the bin. I was the first photographer to test this technique on this location. The floor in the hide was the natural ground and the area was no more than 0,5 sq. metre and the height was about one metre. Therefore it was very little space to move around. And the tripod and my 600 mm lens filled most of it. I felt like strapped into an old Apollo space orbit unit when taking the pictures. And dressed in a boiler-suit and with my body totally folded, I even used space techniques to pee!

The weather was all the time very cooperative with temperatures around +4°C in the morning and +12°C at noon. Mostly sunny and no rain. A quick unloading of three barrels of meat and bones in front of the hide immediately attracted at least 200 hungry Griffons. It took them less than an hour to finish it all in a virtual feeding frenzy. Everything was gone except the bones. Then came the time for the more reluctant Lammergeiers to feast. I was astonished to see them swallow 25 cm long bones at one gulp. Before we left, I had spent three full days in the hide. Then it was time to unfold!

Magnus Elander

Please note that blogs reflect our photographers' opinions and not necessarily those of the directors of Wild Wonders of Europe.