Osprey Picónero

After a great weekend at a homebrewer friends house for the weekend, myself and Mrs. HibernoManchego decided to do some birding on the way home. We came back via one of our favourite roads in Extremadura between Campanario and the La Serena reservoir to look for Little Owls, saw some, had a Golden Eagle fly over us and then found 6 Montagu’s harriers near Talarrubias where we have seen them in the same spot 3 years in a row. Anyway I digress.

What I really wanted to talk about are one of my favourite raptors for the reason being that it is the only species of its genus, its size, its specialisation in fishing and the characteristics it has for doing so and for the fact it can be found on all continents except Antarctica. I have seen them here in Spain, in Cuba and the United States.

So why do I want to mention this bird in particular? Because out of a snap decision we decided to take a detour to Picón, our future home, from Piedrabuena just to see what we might see. We saw the neighbour, the park, the tables outside the bar and left for our current home. Then came the surprise, a few 100 metres outside town there was a huge bird on a pole and it turned out to be an Osprey! With a fish! Next to the road! IN PICÓN! So a bit further down I turned about but just as we were about to come up to it a line of traffic coming the other way scared it off. So majestic! I was gutted I didn’t get any photos but just to see it in Picón was a buzz.