Keep your kids occupied over the bank holiday weekends with our Pyrenean animal colouring book! We’ve made it downloadable to print out at home.

Fun, interesting and educational the colouring book is bi-lingual in English and Spanish – great for adult language learners too! Discover lots of interesting facts about the animals of the Pyrenees, especially the bone-eating bearded vulture known in Spanish as Quebrantahuesos – the bone breaker.

The book was a joint effort between myself, Rosa (for the Spanish parts!) with the illustrations and hard work done by Joe – our long-standing guest and friend from Hawaii who has holidayed with us many times.

We produced the book last year in conjunction with the Foundation for the Conservation of the Bearded Vulture – many of our guests will have enjoyed visiting their headquarters in Ainsa where they have a raptor rescue centre. All profits from sale of the book went to the foundation to help with their conservation efforts.

We’ll still be selling hard copies of the book but with so many children stuck inside at the moment we thought it would be good to have a downloadable version to enjoy. The downloadable version is 14 pages, with the full book 36 pages with lots more animals to discover.

Latest bearded vulture news

Natural re-introduction to Moncayo

The bearded vulture is the rarest vulture in Europe. Last week a pair were seen on Moncayo doing courtship rituals. Moncayo is a massif just outside of Zaragoza, around 160km from the Pyrenees.

If they are courting the pair have probably established themselves on the massif, which would be the first ‘natural’ reintroduction in Spain – the vultures have discovered the area for themselves rather than being released by a program. This is great news and I think shows that the Pyrenees population is growing enough that young vultures are having to venture further to establish territories.

The courtship ritual is an incredible display in which the adults grasp their talons together and fall tumbling to the ground, before releasing each other at the last moment. We were lucky enough to see a pair do this on a hike in Ordesa on our Discover Ordesa walking holiday. We were sitting having lunch on top of a cliff and half a dozen bearded vultures were riding the thermals right in front of us. Two started grasping their talons and tumbling – it was incredible to see and the whole show lasted at least half an hour.