It’s been a while since we last wrote about birds. We’re going to carry on with the story so we can gradually get to know more of the birds that surround us.
We said before that we’d dedicate an article to birds of prey. We’re lucky enough to have a wide variety of these charismatic birds almost on our doorstep.
We’ll start with the largest: the Cinereous Vulture, (Aegypius monachus).
We often see them flying across the skies of Lagartera, but they aren’t so common in other places. Sometimes people travel long distances to see specimens of this genus.
They are dark brown, with a wingspan of almost three metres. Their broad, straight wings usually have finger-like open feathers at the tips, and they have a very broad, short tail. They can often be seen circling, taking advantage of warm air currents to climb, accompanied by their smaller, lighter-coloured relatives, the Eurasian Griffin Vulture (Gyps fulvus). The latter are much more numerous.
Both species are scavengers. We live in a livestock farming area and when an animal dies in the countryside, these raptors make sure that it disappears. Because of this, we can see them quite often.
The next in size are the two large eagles: the Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) and the Spanish Eagle (Aquila adalberti).
Golden eagle (Drawings and photo from Seo Birdlife’s bird guide)
Golden eagles prefer more mountainous areas, so it is more difficult to see them here, a place where there are some hills, but it’s relatively flat with a lot of dehesa (pasture land with Holm oaks). Occasionally, immature birds are seen passing through, looking for territory. However, Spanish Eagles prefer the dehesa, so we are very lucky to have several specimens in the region.
A few years ago they were on the verge of extinction as it is a species that only exists in the Iberian Peninsula, and it was estimated that there were only 50 pairs left. Thanks to a lot of effort and investment, their population has been recovering and nowadays it is not uncommon to see some vultures crossing above us, I have even seen them from my patio… As with the Cinereous Vulture, they are only really common here in central Spain and in parts of the south.
During the breeding season you can hear them ‘barking’, which is the name of the sound they make. I have also seen them fighting with other raptors when they invade their territory, even fighting with vultures, birds that are much bigger than them. Spanish eagles have a wingspan of about two metres.
As you can see in the photos they are very dark with white shoulders and light-coloured heads. However, they have to be at least five years old to look like this,. It is difficult to identify them when they are young because they go through different stages of plumage appearance: straw-coloured when they are one or two years old, light brown and then checkerboard when they start to become adults, because they have some dark feathers and others light, like a checkerboard.
Adult
Straw-coloured plumage
Checkerboard plumage
You can also see Short-toed Snake Eagles (Circaetus gallicus) here in Lagartera, although only in the spring and summer.
As you can see in the photos, they have a light plumage which is slightly mottled underneath, with a darker head. The first birds begin to arrive in mid-March. They have spent the winter in Africa and come here during the breeding season. They like to perch on pylons to look down on their prey. Seen from this position, their voluminous heads are striking. Another characteristic that can help us to differentiate them is that they are able to stand up in the air when there is a bit of headwind to locate the reptiles that make up their diet, something that only other much smaller birds of prey do, such as the kestrels and the kites, which we will talk about later on. Short-toed Snake Eagles can reach a height of 1.75m from wingtip to wingtip.
A raptor that is smaller in size and often seen here in summer, the Booted Eagle (Hieraaetus pennatus), has plumage which reaches very low on their legs, as if the bird was wearing boots.
There are two plumage varieties in the area, light and dark morphs. The light morphs can be distinguished very easily in flight, because they have a white half of the body and head and a black lower half; the problem comes with the dark morphs which can be confused with other species… Identification is not always easy.
These are medium sized birds, with between 1.10m – 1.20m wingspan, similar in size to the Black and Red Kites, which we’ve mentioned in a previous article, and the Common Buzzard, also mentioned earlier.
Black Kite
Red Kite
Common buzzard
That’s enough about raptors for now, as you already have enough material to start identifying quite a few species. Some other time we’ll talk about the local raptors we have yet to mention. I encourage everyone who has a pair of binoculars to go for a walk and try to recognise some of the birds of prey that you can see here. Good luck!
Text: Irene González Sánchez
Photos: José Miguel Millán, apart from the photo and drawings of the golden eagle, which are from the Seo Birdlife guide.
Lagartera, Toledo, July 2025
If you’d like to know more:
Other articles on local birds:
Birds and other wildlife – Temas Lagarteranos
The raptors: