Red eye

An endangered Bearded Vulture at Jerez Zoo. I know I shouldn’t approve of zoos, but When I was little, I used to love my trips to the London Zoo, and it helped instil a a love of the natural world. Nowadays many zoos play a vital role in conservation of threatened species, with programmes to return species to the wild, as with the Bearded Vulture, ( aka Lammergeier) still just a handful left in the Iberian peninsula and on the red list. We had to put aside uncomfortable feelings seeing these magnificent creatures confined to cages, when they should be soaring high over the mountains, but if the wild population can be helped to survive, that is something. And we were pleasantly surprised by Jerez zoo set amongst the trees in beautiful botanic gardens.