Spain 9th August

Blimey, here we are already at the last full day here in Navarre, the time seems to have flown by. I went out for a walk up the hill behind the house for an hour or so which was really refreshing - I didn't even take the camera bag. I saw my first flock of small birds foraging just above the house and amongst them I got my first full view of a Crested Tit of the trip. Up on the hill, I was glad to finally ID a pipit I'd seen up there a few days ago. By a process of elimination and seeing some key features, I came to the conclusion it was a juv' Tree Pipit.

Walking on around, I passed someone looking for fungi up in the woods. Finding fungi is taken very seriously here and it seems everyone is always on the lookout. Our friend and host Javier, is also very keen and went in to great detail to explain the differences between the various species and what are and are not, either good or safe to eat.

 This is good to eat, locally it's called a 'Cep' or something like that

Whereas this is a definite 'no no', it's a Death Cap

What would be thought of as a poor mornings fungi foray

And something we couldn't identify (even by the local) it looks like a carnivorous plant of some kind

Back at the house I sat on the balcony and had breakfast while watching the family of Black Redstarts and also several Serins feeding in the field below. Views from around the house.....

 The house in which we were staying, is the large one lower right

And the view from behind the house looking towards where the previous picture was taken

Later in the morning, we all headed off to the coast for the afternoon to a town called Hondarribia While the others went to the beach, I took a short walk of a couple kilometers around the coastline. It was now rather too warm for my liking and probably also the birds. Despite there being lots of scrub and pine trees I only saw a few birds and only one of those was a new species for the trip, that being a calling Cetti's Warbler.

 Returning back to the harbour, I heard the unmistakable calls of several Sandwich Terns searching the harbour for food.

Getting picked up by Javier, we returned to town for a late lunch (it was now 3.45pm) with the others. The remainder of the afternoon was spent walking around the old part of town which has some splendid traditional buildings and also outdoor escalators which seemed a little 'over the top' - no pun intended !'............

....... there aren't any escalators on Shetland !

                          Robbie