Spanish Wildlife!

Before I went to Madrid for my year abroad I was already really into photography. The only thing that's changed is that now I take more photos of actual people! Growing up I've always enjoyed wildlife watching and photographing the nature I found in my garden. I remember showing my dad my holiday snaps from Corfu, Greece and (after the 20th photo of a hermit crab) he asked me if I had any photos of the family at all or if everything was going to be either a twig or a snail!

Spain was a fantastic opportunity to test my photography skills and with so many gorgeous things to photograph I gradually expanded my repertoire... My love of nature remained though and here and there throughout my blog you can find the photos to prove it. I thought I'd put together a post with some of my wildlife snaps all in one place. So lets dive in!

Spain is of course not that far away from England so there is a lot of cross over in terms of the birds you can find. Here's a sweet little bluetit from Segovia:

And his mate the goldfinch:

This blackbird was warbling in the setting sun in Seville:

Spring springs early in Spain so the blossom was out in Toledo in full by early March:

There are some more exotic birds to see in Madrid as well - here are some of the quaker parrots that spend their days squawking in Retiro Park:

This Black Redstart was watching the world go by on the sea wall at San Sebastian:

There were also little wading birds scurrying along the beach:

A bird I was particularly happy to see was the Hoopoe - I first heard of this bird while playing a kind of top trump card game with my family when I was very small, I always wanted to see one with its huge crest and bright orange body with black and white stripes.

Córdoba was one of my favourite places that I visited while in Spain and this Gecko watched us one night as we ate dinner:

A gorgeous blue butterfly was sipping nectar in the garden of the Alcázar:

 Back in Madrid this was one of the splendid winter roses in the cemetery across the street:

Here's one of the hundreds of sleepy terrapins from Atocha train station:

And finally this little Sparrow was sheltering from the sun in a tree by the river on one of the hottest summer days I experienced in Spain!

I hope you enjoyed this collection of some of my wildlife shots from my year in Spain. I'm thinking this will be the start of a series of posts with roundups of the architecture, landscapes, food etc that I saw while away.

To see more of the photographs of all the wonderful things I saw in Spain then make sure to follow me on instagram @madridadrift!