Julian Sykes Wildlife Holidays: Another superb year comes to a close!

It has been a couple of months since I updated this blog and I apologise and here's an idea of what's been going on since mid-September.

For just short of two weeks in late September I was guiding in British Columbia, which (as always) was incredible despite an unfortunate injury to a lady on the trip. This did allow your's truly a ride in a Canadian Airforce Helicopter and thankfully the lady is slowly making a full recovery. The wildlife was also awesome with multiple sightings of Grizzly & Black Bears, Orcas, Gray & Humpback Whales, Sea & River Otters, North American Beaver, Dall's Porpoise, California and Stellar's Sea-lions plus an incredible pod of 200+ Pacific White-sided Dolphins around the boat.

October was dominated first by 2 Iberian Lynx trips, one of which was combined with an extension to Tarifa, which was brilliant apart from the Lynx not being too cooperative. Despite this setback we did get fabulous views of many other mammal species such as Mouflon, Wild Boar, Spanish Ibex, 7 species of bat, Long-finned Pilot Whale, Bottle-nose Dolphins plus loads of great birds and still some good migration.

At the end of October I enjoyed another Valencia Short Break with a lady, which is always a great pleasure as I like to catch up with things locally. As always it through one or two surprise species along with the usual suspects. Very much looking forward to my next one in May 2013.

November involved an excellent 'tailor-made' trip around Northern Spain visiting the Blancas steppes and Gallocanta Lake for Dupont's Lark, Black-bellied Sandgrouse, Hen Harriers and 15,000 Common Cranes.

Next we moved to the Belchite steppes for more sandgrouse with views of Pin-tailed and Black-bellied together plus lots more larks and raptors.

Then it was up to the pre-Pyrenees for a few nights where in one day we got all our main targets - Wallcreeper, Black Woodpecker, Alpine Accentor and Lammergeier - our American friend was over the moon.

Finally we headed for the Catalunyan coast and the wonderful Ebro Delta with 1000's of waterbirds followed by finishing just south of Valencia at the ricefields of the Albufera. Bob's last 'life bird' was a lone Red-knobbed Coot amongst lots of it's commoner cousins completing a fabulous 8 night holiday.

Here's a message I received from Anthea and Bob -

"When we decided to visit the Spanish Pyrenees, we asked Julian Sykes to put together a tailor-made trip for us - best choice we ever made! He prepared an amazing itinerary that included the Blancas steppes for the Dupont's Lark; Laguna di Gallocanta for the incredible sight of many thousands of Common Cranes coming in to roost; the Belchite Plains for sandgrouse; the spectacularly beautiful Pre-Pyrenees for Lammergeier, Wallcreeper, Black Woodpecker and many other great birds - and finally the fantastic wetlands of the Ebro Delta, which offers Moustached Warbler, Penduline Tit and Bluethroat amongst its many delights. Julian worked so tirelessly to find us the birds, that we came away with every target species we had asked him to find - and several bonus birds too!

“The hotels were well-located and extremely comfortable, and the food (breakfasts, packed lunches and evening meals) was uniformly of a very high standard.
“We cannot recommend these tailor-made tours, and Jules' skill and expertise, highly enough. Thank you again,
Julian Sykes Wildlife Holidays - we will be back!"
Bob Dewire, Connecticut, USA - Anthea Skiffington, Canterbury, UK

So my last trip of 2012 was 'Iberian Lynx in Andalucia' and was the best yet! Ironically it involved two ladies who had miised Lynx on a previous visit but this was so much better. In all we had 8 sightings of )at least) 6 different Iberian Lynx including three together plus views of an Otter, Spanish Ibex, Mouflon, Wild Boar, Red Fox and 5 species of bat, including lots of Schreiber's Bats.