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Author Archive | José Antonio Sánchez Iglesias

Male white-heade duck

Doñana in April

April is a great month to visit Doñana, one of the best times for birdwatchers or to enjoy our wildlife and colourful landscapes. It is also a very busy month so it is very important to book your tour in advanced if you don’t want to find out that we and all companies offering tours […]

Iberian lynx carrying a rabbit in its mouth

Hooray, they’re confined !

If they thought in human way, that is what the inhabitants of Doñana should be thinking now. There have never been in Doñana’s history days like these; days when its forests, marshes, beaches and dunes have found absolute peace. The unusualness of the situation that humanity is facing has led us to almost absolute confinement, but this […]

Black winged kite under the sunrise light

Wintspring

This dry and warm winter that has accompanied us during the last weeks, more similar to spring than anything else, has brought us a series of evident changes in the usual natural events in Doñana for this time of year. The marshes next to El Rocío have a good level of water and this is attracting a […]

Grazalema Mountains

Beautiful days in the end of winter

Cold sunrises followed by hot mornings ensure the full catalog of lights and colors throughout one of our tours now in late winter. The mists of some days give us phantasmagorical landscapes and bring us distant sounds. Others days however, we can see the silhouette of the distant mountains of the Grazalema Mountains, mounted on the marshes […]

Head of long-eared owl

Tremble with fear mice

I do not envy the fate of mice and other small rodents now when the cold take over our forests and marshes. If you have the unfortunate luck of living in our pine forests and cork oaks, you will have to go on eggshells when you leave after sunset because that’s where the tawny owls lie […]

Male redstart perched on a branch

Small migratory beauties

 At this time of year, for a few weeks, we can enjoy in our forests and marshes the presence of a large number of very graceful and delicate and often very bright colored little birds, which visit us in their annual migration.   They spend the spring in northern Europe, where they breed, but when […]

A subadult Spanish imperial eagle taking off

Raptors in August

High temperatures have scorched the park and water scarcity models landscapes and transforms animal lives. The marshes of El Rocio have dry out and the same has happened to the near La Rocina Stream; we have go up to Charco del Acebrón, next to the Acebrón Palace Visitor Center to find some water in its bed. A walk through […]

Family of coots among the reeds

Coots can’t count

Rain arrived a little later than normal this year, the marshes got filled properly but much later than usual. Due to this birds begun thinking about breeding much later than average. As a result, this year we have in Doñana marshlands that offer in May landscapes more typical of the marshes in April or even March. Weather forecasts announce […]

Flooded marshes with yellow flowers in the foreground

After the rain

A couple of weeks after rain began, the marshes of Doñana have suddenly changed its look. In just a few days we have gone from having a landscape of cracked clays and yellowish and ocher colors, to having another one where the flooded marshes and the green color dominate. In only a few days we […]

Caño Guadimar panoramic

Images of Doñana in spring

Beautiful skies decorated with clouds serve us these days as the ideal background for the bright colorful landscapes of Doñana this spring. Blue of the water and the sky, yellow of the goldfinches, daffodils and daisies, pink of flamingos, crane bills and orchids, white of spoonbills, avocets and egrets, brown of corn buntings, short-toed larks […]

Lynx in the mist

Foggy days in Doñana

What happens on foggy days? In the beginning it’s a bit annoying, obviously the visibility is not very good, but then you realize that a little fog is not going to stop the unstoppable flow of life. The first change to the best that you feel when you go out on a foggy day is […]

Black-winged kite in a tree

Black-winged kite: a ghost at dusk

A few weeks ago I had a lucky encounter in the Aznalcazar Marshes, a beautiful specimen of this bird, one of my three favorite ones, posed for us at close range, which allowed me to take a good collection of photographs. Back at home I enjoyed seeing them so much on the computer that I […]

Larva of palpares hispanus

The beast among the leaf litter

The larva of our largest ant lion, the palpares hispanus, is an insect in the order of neuroptera, whose adult is very reminiscent of dragonflies, although it does not show their flight abilities. Its four narrow and elongated wings propel it slowly and awkwardly and are folded along its abdomen when they are at rest […]

Iberian lynx in the mist

Autumn pictures of Doñana

Below you will find some of the photos we have taken over the last few weeks during our tours to the forests and marshes in the north of the Doñana National Park. We normally start in the Coto del Rey pine forests where we try to spot our iberian lynx and get it some days. […]

urginea spike of flowers

Sea onion, a miracle of nature

  The sea onion (drimia maritima) is the first flower that decorates our meadows just before the arrival of autumn; this survivor to extreme conditions dares everything and opens her precious spikes of white flowers defying the heat of September, breaking with her beauty the beastly austerity of summer landscapes. From among the dry meadows in the pine forest, […]

Collared pratincole in flight

Collared pratincole, the marsh acrobat

A visit to the Doñana’s marshes is only complete when you get to enjoy the sighting of one of these birds. They resemble terns and fly as agile as swallows, feeding often in flight like them but being closely related to waders. Long, pointing, narrow wings, deeply forked tail, short legs and a short bill with a bright red patch at […]

Female red deer with fawn in the high dry grasses

Doñana after the fire

At the end of June, fire caused by accident in a local charcoal company fueled by strong winds and high temperatures, destroyed around 8,500 has in the Doñana area, 6,500 of which belonged to the Doñana Natural Site. The Doñana National Park was not affected but some valuable areas within the Natural Park were razed […]

Lynx lying down

Iberian lynx, an unexpected encounter

Enric and his companions were enjoying that cool morning the lush nature of Doñana. We had been stopping every few minutes to watch small forest birds such as robin, black redstart, serin and sardinian warbler, and some red deer we came across on the way. We were all excited thinking of meeting the king of […]

Sunset in the flooded marshes

The perfect sunset, the power of nature

I feel privileged every day for being able to enjoy Doñana, an amazing piece of nature. I also feel fulfilled as a person for having the opportunity in my work as a guide to make people happy for a while by introducing them into it. It is a very particular feeling, you may know it, people can pass each other valuable feelings. But there is […]

Jose A. Valverde heronry

Ecosystems of Doñana

The Guadalquivir River and the Atlantic Ocean shaped the old bay located at the mouth of the river and created the region known today as Doñana. The sediments carried by the river and the sands pushed inland by the sea currents and winds filled the shallow waters of the bay to build a territory made […]

Caño Guadiamar in summer

Caño Guadiamar in summer

A stop at Caño Guadiamar these days becomes an experience full of sensations. The old course of the River Guadiamar, passing through Doñana becomes every summer one of the few pockets of moisture across the northern marshland, an oasis that turns into a valuable refuge for thousands of waterfowl, raptors and passerines on migration during the dry season. […]

Spanish imperial eagle in flight

Doñana’s Spanish imperial eagle

The tough life of the queen of the sky It is midday and we return from one of our tours to the northern marshes of Donana National Park. Several hours ago, in the early morning, we found a fresh lynx track, but we were not lucky to stumble upon the animal. Several male red deer […]

Antlion larvae on a hand

Antlion, the monster of the sands

Antlions are insects belonging to the order Neuroptera. They are not true ants, although their small larvae that can reach 1 cm in length may remind them. They are fierce predators of ants and other small insects that share with them the sandy soils in which they live. This small creatures, looking like something out of a […]

Flock of flamingos in flight

Summer is around the corner

Summer is knocking at Doñana’s door. Meadows and forests edges are not green anymore although some Spanish iris, daisies, tassel hyacinths, larkspurs, fragrant virgin’s bowers and particularly our halimium halimifolium, one of our yellow rockroses, persist on trying to put a note of colour to it. Rabbits jump around happily early in the morning, watched […]

iberian lynx walking

Lynx at Ajolí Bridge

Look who was giving us access to the Park last June 1st. A male Lynx yawning quietly after drinking in the waters that still run under the Ajolí Bridge, next to El Rocío. He looked at us a few times as if he cared a hoot that we were there enjoying the sighting. While nightingales and […]

Front of male pintail sandgrouse

Pintail sandgrouse, a beauty out of this world

There is no bird sighting better than pintail sandgrouse in Doñana, from my point of view. Well, ok, a good Spanish imperial eagle, a squacco heron in full breeding plumage, a black-winged kite hovering, a male Montagu’s harrier flying low, a close view of a red-necked nightjar, a short-toed eagle, an oriole, a roller, a […]

tamarisks full of egrets and ibis nests

José A. Valverde Heronry

The rain we had recently have flooded large areas of the marshes and that is encouraging more and more birds to join the colony and start breeding, a bit later than usual, but numbers increase day by day. Glossy ibis, purple heron, squacco heron, little egret, cattle egret, night heron are the most abundant breeding species, […]

Caño Guadiamar after the rain in May 2016

It came, it changed

A total of 160 mm of rain accumulated during a few days last week have changed everything in Doñana very quickly. Large puddles still make the driving along Raya Real difficult, although they get reduced day by day. In the adjacent pine forests, solitary female red deer that have left the group wonder about waiting for the […]

european nightjar perched on a branch

Nightjar, one of our lesser known birds

This bizarre nocturnal birds with huge mouths, large moustaches and sorrowful eyes begin to return from their winter quarters in Africa towards middle of April, although most of them are coming back now in the first half of May.  Occasionally we come across one of them on passage in the marshes, like the european nightjar on […]

male golden oriole perched on a branch

Migration progresses through Doñana

Spring goes by and migration keeps coming through Doñana. Mixed flocks of small waders including ringed and some little ringed plovers, dunlin, little and some Temminck’s stints , curlew sandpiper and Kentish plover are coming through and feeding in the scarce shallow waters in the Park and rice fields and mainly in the dry marshes. Good […]

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