Fauna & Flora Articles

Wallcreeper - Tichodroma muraria

Spotlight on the wallcreeper: bird of the year 2025

The wallcreeper, with its bright scarlet wing patches, is one of the Pyrenees most famous birds and prized sighting for ornithologists. It’s being celebrated as the ‘Bird of 2025’ by SEO/Birdlife to highlight the dangers it faces and why this small bird is so special.

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Gentians and Orchids – the Pyrenees spring to life

The mountains of the Valle de Tena are looking beautiful and bursting into life. Spring gentians, trumpet gentians and elder flowered orchids are covering the sunnier meadows around Ibon de Piedrafita and above the village of Sandinies.   Elder flowered orchids...

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Emperor Moth

Saw this beautiful, huge moth on the pavement right outside our front door the other morning. Found out it was an Emperor moth. Really large – about 5cm across  and fantastic colour around the eye spots and the bright red flashes near the wingtips. He kindly...

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Egyptian vulture & Northern wheatears

Saw my first Egyptian vulture of the year while out walking near the village of Piedrafita today. There very distictive with their black and white wings, yellow head a diamond shaped tail. These vultures migrate from northern Africa and the Middle East at the...

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Ophrys Orchids in the Pyrenees

Ophyrs orchids attract male bees by imitating the shape, colour and scent of female bees. Each orchid is specialised to be pollinated by only one type of bee. Read an interesting article on the bbc today about bees cross pollinating different orchids creating hybrids....

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Signs of spring

Few signs of spring as I took a walk out from Biescas yesterday. First few primroses are coming out in sunny spots alongside the path and few hepatica have started to join them. The stinking hellebore have been out a few weeks – the flowers of these remain green...

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Mating Swallowtail Butterflies

Anna took this fantastic picture of a pair of Swallowtails butterflies mating last week on one of our Peaks & Passes walking holidays. We regularly see these colourful butterflies on our walks but we’d never seen them mating before. Sorry for the lack of...

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