Val d'Aran
Wildlife of Spain's green Pyrenees
Sunday 28 June - Sunday 5 July 2009 (8 days)
Join Mike Lockwood on his third tour to the Val d'Aran, a superb lush, green valley, much like the French Pyrenees Ð but in fact in the Spanish State! Here's Mike's tour description:
© Paul Browning/Nature Portfolio
Tufted Marbled Skipper
Fortunately even today, in an era of rampant redrawing of national boundaries, a few anachronisms such as Val d'Aran still exist. This high valley lying to the north of the main Pyrenean axis and whose main river, the Garona, heads north to the Atlantic at Bordeaux, is not part of France, as geography would seem to dictate, but belongs instead politically to Catalonia and the Spanish State. With its own language (Aranese, a dialect of Occitan) and despite having relinquished some of its 'lost valley' feel to the needs of the skiing fraternity (the first road into Spain was only opened in 1924), Val d'Aran is still a paradise for all types of flora and fauna, including some of the best subalpine forests and pastures in the Pyrenees, 120 species of butterflies, Lammergeiers and even Brown Bears!
We will investigate this 'valley of the valleys' (translating literally from Aranese), abounding in glacial features, from our base in Salardú. Our hosts are both keen naturalists active in local bird conservation and run a hotel adjusted to the needs of 'wildlifers' and their off-beat timetables! On our daily excursions we will make good use of the roads that wind up to the high pastures and passes with their glacial lakes and mountain pine and fir forests, as well as investigating the valley bottoms and their superb hay meadows and deciduous woodland. In 2007 we recorded Downy Emerald for the first time for the Spanish State and refound Large Chequered Skipper, 25 years after its only previous Catalan record!!, and in 2008 87 species of butterfly.
Price: £ 1,225
Single supps.: £ 195
Deposit: £ 300 per person
The price per person includes return scheduled flight from London - Toulouse, airport taxes, 8 nights' accommodation, all meals, transport and the services of the leaders.
The price excludes holiday insurance, drinks, and other personal expenses.
Principal Leader: Mike Lockwood
Day 1
We take a scheduled flight London ÐToulouse, and drive across the border, then up to our hotel in Salardú. If time permits we will have a chance for a first inspection of some of the local meadows and streams.
Overnight Salardú
Days 2 - 7
Although mainly under 1,000 m, the Toran valley in the north of Aran is one of the most butterfly-rich sites and here we will be looking out in patches of meadows coloured pink by musk mallow for Purple and Lesser Purple Emperors, Chequered and Large Chequered Skippers, Great Sooty Satyr, Woodland Grayling, Scarce and Sooty Coppers and a variety of fritillaries including False Heath, Spotted and Marbled. The head of the valley is home to Honey Buzzards and is graced by mixed beech and European silver fir forests with support from sturdy Norway maples, alpine elderberry, a wonderful variety of ferns, creeping snapdragon on rock faces, and in the understorey wintergreens, the parasitic yellow bird's-nest, spreading bellflower and herb Paris. Two very special creatures here are Catalonia's only Middle-spotted Woodpeckers and Cordulegaster bidentata (a near relative of the more familiar Golden-ringed Dragonfly) found in the Val d'Aran in meadows and along forest edges.
At mid-altitude we will be exploring the woodlands and pastures at the heads of the valleys of Artiga de Lin, Varradòs and Tredòs. The former boasts one of the few limestone outcrops in the area and as such has the most diverse flora: western St. John's wort, tufted catchfly and livelong and Pyrenean saxifrages on rock outcrops and meadows dotted with Irish spurge, whorled Soloman's seal, narcissus-flowered anemone, lily of the valley, alpine pasque flower, great yellow, spring and trumpet gentians, Pyrenean, St. Bruno's and St. Bernard's lilies, Welsh poppy, Pyrenean sow thistle, alpine aster, roseroot, Pyrenean cinquefoil and many more. If we can get up to one of the few remaining snow patches in this north-facing valley, we may find plants such as Thore's buttercup and oxlip just coming into flower. Butterflies include Clouded Apollo, Northern Wall Brown, Bright-eyed Ringlet and lycenids such as Amanda's and Mazarine Blues.
A further notable feature of Artiga de Lin is the cascade of Uelhs de Joèu, the upwelling of an underground river fed by melt-water from the glacier on Aneto (the highest peak in the Pyrenees) that cascades through the dank European silver fir forests; the understorey here boasts goatsbeard spiraea, baneberry, wood saxifrage, bird's-nest orchid, wintergreens, Pyrenean valerian, purple toothwort and aconite-leaved buttercup.
The Varradòs valley is more open and a good site for Lammergeier (2 pairs in the area), Crag Martin, Griffon Vulture, Black and Red Kites and other raptors, while meadows here and elsewhere hold Red-backed Shrike, Rock Bunting, Whinchat and Yellowhammer. The meadows and woods are painted yellow with great yellow gentian, with a supporting cast of twayblades, clustered bellflower, globeflower, Martagon lily, English iris, adenostyles, arnica and the huge umbellifer molopospermum on riverbanks and cobweb houseleeks on the granite rocks. This too is the territory of Clouded Apollo, Small, Large, Escher's and Idas Blues, Purple-shot, Purple-edged and Scarce Coppers and Geranium Argus, as well as Alpine Marmot, Red and Roe Deer and Chamois.
Aside from its superb meadows (Lesser Marbled, Marsh and Niobe Fritillaries, Geranium Argus and Large Blue) and forests (Citril Finch, Crossbill, Crested Tit, Goldcrest and Black Woodpecker), Tredòs is famous for its sphagnum bogs that boast water horsetail, long-leaved sundew, alpine bartsia, marsh felwort and populations of White-faced Darter and Brilliant and Downy Emeralds, the latter species in its only known Catalan location. Flowers include the medicinal arnica, Gentiana burseri, large-flowered butterwort and small white orchid. In more grazed meadows, we can expect a wealth of orchids: greater butterfly, black vanilla, fragrant, burnt tip, broad-leaved marsh, frog and pyramidal orchids in 2008!!
A trip to this sector of the Pyrenees would be incomplete without a visit to a glacial lake. After looking for Crag Martin, Ring Ouzel, Alpine and Red-billed Choughs, Citril Finch, Northern Wheatear, Whinchat and Water Pipit in the pastures around the high pass of Bonaigua, we will walk up through the light pine forest decorated with Campanula scheuchzeri, alpine trefoil, Pyrenean toadflax, alpine coltsfoot, alpine rose and sesamoides to the delightful Estanyola de Gerber. Around the lake we will search the rock chaos for the zig-zagged-stemmed streptopus and Pyrenean lily and look on rock faces for white musky saxifrage and in the streams for starry saxifrage. The nearby limestone mountain that rises between Salardú and Pla de Beret is a good place for Apollo, Rock Thrush, hunting Short-toed and Golden Eagles, and plants such as moonwort, garland flower, mountain avens, matted globularia and fairy foxglove.
Six nights Salardú
Day 8
We return to Toulouse and will stop en route if there is time.
Accommodation: We stay in a hotel on the outskirts of Salardú designed by and for birdwatchers, complete with terrace views across Val d'Aran to the permanent snows of the Aneto glacier. We dine in local restaurants.
Numbers: Max. 12 clients