Just returned from a trip to central Spain where I’d hoped to photograph little bustard and rock thrush, the two target species for the trip, plus many other species of birds and insects I hoped to catch up with as I drove around the backroads with my friend. Because the bustards and the rock thrush are a bit tricky to get good photos of without local knowledge, we engaged the services of Wildwatching Spain who claimed to be able to provide our target species and more. Man! What an incompetent bunch of idiots they turned out to be! I guessed from the difficulty we had in organising the trip via email that things were not looking promising! Three days before we were due to fly out to Spain, they still hadn’t provided a contact number or told us where to meet them. On the first day we were told to rendezvous at 06:30hrs to go to a lark hide and at 07:50hrs, their guide polled up apologising for his lateness and saying he’d had a row with his girlfriend! 90 minutes late on the first day is just unacceptable!! From there it just went downhill as they attempted amateur methods to get us close to birds and, having no apparent plan for us, by early evening we cut our losses and got rid of them! Lot’s more of the details of their shocking services in the review section soon but please, do not waste your time booking with these jokers!
We did by chance meet a local, professional Spanish nature photographer who did his best to try and get us the species we wanted (at a price!) and to be fair he did his best but struggled due to having no time to prepare for us. He put us in his drinking pool hide on the first day while he went scouting for bustard, but Spain has had it bad recently so there was no shortage of water which meant birds were scare at the drinking pool. We had a day in a hide for bluethroat which was successful for me and then a failed attempt at the little bustards which, though calling, did not appear on the lek. We did a second attempt at little bustard and this time we saw the bird but the light was dire resulting in some really low quality ‘record’ shots. In the end, no rock thrushes were seen and we found the bird photography very hard work with nothing much being very approachable. Add this to the fact that Wildwatching Spain failed to deliver any species for us, the trip was pretty much doomed from the outset and we came back with very few images to show for our money.
Just a word of advice to anyone thinking of booking with Wildwatching Spain (www.wildwatchingspain.com) DON’T! They are a newly formed company using inexperienced guides and are a waste of time! Avoid them at all costs is my advice.
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