Field Trip: the Monroy-Trujillo (Cáceres-Spain) road: cranes, dehesa and snow backdrops

IN the picture you can see some wintering cranes, full of expectation in a break from feeding from acorn and other, under the canopy of holm-oak dehesa. Their pic was taken on Valentine's Day, this year. A shiny one after the long, hard winter in the Southwest of Spain, in Extremadura. They will soon be going back to their breeding havens in northern Europe: Germany, Scandinavia, Russia...

See the video here:




Link for more pics: album of the trip. I took them on a journey full of great surprises, nice weather after the hard winter days of this seemingly never-ending season and good company. Dehesa, cranes and some of their azzure-winged magpies as companions, a red-legged partridge, kestrel, griffon vulture and some nice backdrops of snow capped mountains of the La Vera district with holm-oak dehesa on the foreground.

I hope you enjoy it as we did!

Jesús

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Videos taken in the past:


Always curious and playful to the layman eye, these azzure-winged magpies (Cyanopica cyana, Sp. Rabilargos, local: Rabúo, Mohino) are actually looking for breadcrumbs and leftovers of fruit and the like that visitors to Monfragüe National Park leave there. After a while, flocks of them will range the area and come closer enough and ready for a snapshot or a video recording like the one here. This was taken during the FIO '06 International Birdwatching Fair of Extremadura, Spain. During a visit to the fair and the park by 1st year Tourism students at the Faculty of Business Studies and Tourism, University of Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain.



A Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea, Sp. Garza real) swallowing a catch, a carp maybe at "El Salor", one of Cáceres nearby reservoirs, Extremadura, Spain.