It's like watching a scene from a western. Against a backdrop of craggy mountains, a coffee-coloured dust cloud rises in the arid air. Feet stamp on stony ground. Eyes lock, two faces stare unflinchingly at each other. Tension mounts. A fight is about to start. Only these aren't cowboys about to settle their differences in a duel. It's a pair of hungry vultures fighting furiously over a dead rabbit.
It's not the Wild West either. This is Mas de Buñyol, a vulture observatory, located deep in the Els Port mountains of Aragon in north-eastern Spain. Also known as the Mountains of the Three Kings, this is where the ancient kingdoms of Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia meet.
The area has abundant wildlife. Above forests of beech, oak and cork cruise eagles and vultures. Smaller birds – including firecrests, treecreepers, tits and warblers – flit among the trees. Underneath them, though rarely seen, pass wildcat, boar and ibex.
Visible every morning, though, are 400 or so wild griffon vultures as they fly squadron-like into Mas de Buñyol for a slap-up rabbit breakfast. Swooping in from nearby cliff, gorge and canyon roosts, they tuck into around 200 farmed rabbit carcases provided by José Ramón Moragrega, the observatory's owner.
