The day starts off quite cold and we are almost glad there are few birds about ‑ the brisk walking soon warms us up. We don’t expect to cover the whole twelve kilometres at our normal birdwatching speed and decide that we will turn back at 3 pm, regardless of the distance covered, to ensure we are back on the good road by dusk.
The original mule track has long fallen into disrepair - in places we can look down and see it crumbling or covered with scree. The track used now follows an aqueduct serving the small hydro-electric power (H.E.P.) station at Poncebos. It is well maintained, though in places it is made of sharp bits of rock. From Poncebos the track climbs 200 metres fairly rapidly and then more or less follows the level of the aqueduct.
Birds of any sort prove few and far between, mainly wrens and robins, and an occasional vulture or raven overhead. The sheer, vertical cliffs, rising to over two thousand metres in places, are said to be a favourite haunt of the wallcreeper. We look hard, for it is an attractive bird that we both want to see, but there is no sign of any today.
The National Game Preserve of the Picos de Europa occupies most of the central massif and holds some 2,000 chamois. The game preserve itself dates from 1970, however the area had already been put under protection in 1905 to protect the chamois. During the civil war the Picos became an area of guerilla warfare and the chamois were slaughtered for food by both sides.
In 1940 numbers were thought to have been reduced to sixty animals, and hunting was forbidden for eight years to allow the species to recover. There was restricted hunting in the early fifties, then it was banned again until 1963. Today hunting is allowed during September, October and November by permit only.
The single chamois that we see on the pastures way above the track is probably a male, since they tend to live solitarily while the females and youngsters generally form small herds.
There are no towns or villages inside the game preserve, and human activity is traditionally confined to raising cattle, hunting, and, since the last century, mining. The cattle, sheep and goats are kept indoors during the winter and taken to the high pastures in May. Their milk is turned into cheese, which is cured in caves and taken down to market shortly before the snow made transport impossible.
As we scan these high pastures for more chamois, a call which sounds like a raptor catches our attention and we spend the best part of the next three hours looking for the caller. There are at least two birds involved, each with two calls, and they move along the valley well below the path. In another season I would have said there was a youngster calling for food and then using an excitement call when the food arrived. The main call was pi-oooo and the second one a low pitched cackling.
After studying B.W.P. this evening we decide on sparrowhawk as a likely candidate: we know they were around and had seen them in the valley bottoms. Their relatively small size would allow them to perch unseen by us, and to fly inconspicuously ‑ small birds flying through were quickly lost against the background of broken rock, grass, small trees, etc. But for the time being the noise must remain a mystery.
Although we complete probably only half the walk, we are well able to appreciate the beauty and grandeur of the gorge. The cliffs often fall 100m or more straight below us and went several hundred more straight up. Jim walks on the rock side of the path, daring to look down only when standing still. If we go further, the path crosses the gorge twice on iron foot‑bridges and in some places goes inside the mountain itself. Below us the ice-clear water of the Cares flows noisily towards Poncebos.
The sun has been shining all day on the mountain tops but at this time of year it does not penetrate far down the gorge, and dusk lasts a long time. As we head back to Poncebos, groups of siskin fly past; they disappear into the rocks presumably to roost in crevices.
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