Azure-winged Magpies

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This is to be our last day here in Los Batanes, Lagunas de Ruidera, so we made it an "in-camp" day. John spent most of it photographing birds (of the feathered variety). There is a large family of Azure-winged Magpies living in the trees around us. These birds live in large families in only two places in the world, one being here in the Iberian Peninsula and the other in Eastern Asia, mostly China. It is the first time that we have ever seen them. When they spread their wings to fly they look magnificent - the wings and tail feathers are the deepest blue. Due to the abundance of leaves now on the trees, our photos of the birds in the trees are not brilliant, so here in this blog we have just included a photo of a few of them feeding on the ground near our van. We had to wait quite a while and exert a lot of patience to get these shots! The magpies are spending most of the time sitting on their nests, of which there is at least one in every tree i.e. there are dozens of them, all around us. It will not be long before the chicks hatch out.

Tomorrow morning we are off to a campsite in Castille y León to Tordesillas, North West of Madrid, just South of Valladolid. This is our second choice of stop-over on the route to Galicia. We haven´t booked in but we reckon there will be plenty of space this time of the year. Although this site has filled up quite a bit today, there is still loads of room. It will be a bonus if Tordesillas is half as good as this site. We´ll see what tomorrow brings!

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