There may have been something on American TV about this place. It's a gold mine and a first order environmental catastrophe - really. The name for the river that the Spanish know as Duero and the Portuguese know as Douro (empties into the Atlantic at Oporto) comes from d' oro (of gold). The Romans mined this place in the 1st & 2nd century A.D. and they did it in a manner that they called "ruina montina" and is similar to what we do today by drilling down into rock and loading the drill holes with explosives. Except that they didn't have explosives and instead channelled water 85km and funneled it down shafts dug into this, what I assume to be, glacial deposit (equivalent, I suppose to the placer deposits of Calif.) and undercutting the entire mountain where upon it would blow out in one go and concentrate the gold where they could pick up the pieces. I think I remember that they recovered 6,000 kg of gold. But they removed hundreds of millions of m3 of material to do it.
It hasn't grown back. Except for a few chestnuts, doubtless cultivated, there is almost nothing taller than the heather.
Which leaves a bunch of questions. Betcha anything the price of gold has fallen in real terms.
And of course, as you would expect from environmental catastrophe, the bird life here is exceptional - except you have to know everything by ear because the little suckers hide from you and you can't see anything and I don't know many of these by ear - exceptionally frustrating.
So today's bird list is Blackbird, Chaffinch, (Winter) Wren, by ear and Kites, Kestrel, & Eagle (could be Golden, Imperial, or Spanish, depending on the book you are using). House Martin, most of which have moved to the cities, is still nesting on these cliffs. Also had terrific looks at Bonelli's, Dartford & Cetti's Warblers and Honey Buzzard a couple of days ago.
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