Catalonia

It isn’t yet eight a.m. and the target for the trip has been secured. Three or more Dupont’s Larks have been singing since first light when I arrived with Stephen Christopher from Catalan Bird Tours, and finally one of them perches, offering definitive views of this elusive species.

Getting a target bird so early can leave the rest of the day flat, but not today. The Lleida Steppes yield Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, Little Bustard, Great-spotted Cuckoo, Stone Curlew, and more as the morning unfolds in this place of thyme and stone. On its margins we watch an Eagle Owl crouch cat-like by one of its chicks under a crumbling rock overhang.

The area's special birds are concentrated in remnant patches of steppe in a vast plain from which earth-grey settlements and isolated hills jut. Roads criss-cross the landscape while the runway of an abandoned airfield seems straight out of the apocalyptic imaginings of JG Ballard. At one place dozens of recently-arrived Black Kites perch on a rocky outcrop, close but incurious, interested only in the bulldozer working the city landfill site.

By early afternoon we are in a more rugged landscape, parked in a steep-sided but shallow valley in the Mas de Melons-Alfes reserve. Fewer birds are active at this time of day, though Black Wheatears and Thekla Larks work the corrugated slopes while Jackdaws and Red-billed Choughs congregate by an empty cattle yard.

As we are leaving Stephen suddenly stops the car as a first winter Golden Eagle drifts over the valley edge and passes close by, the startling white wing patches and tail contrasting with its pitch-black body and the subtle browns of the land. On the plain it would be a dot in the sky, its presence apparent from a great distance. Here its arrival is unannounced, but once it does appear the valley is filled with its presence, a fitting climax to the day.