Undoubtedly the best part of the day's birding was at Zafarraya on the way back. We parked in the new car park which was being opened this same day by some local dignitary, all accompanied by an absolutely hideous piece of acoustic contamination. However, once through the tunnel and walking westwards under a lowering sky, the first thing that caught the eye - you couldn't miss it!- was a 1st winter Golden Eagle,which Bob managed to photograph, after which life took on a huge new dimension as a very irate male Peregrine Falcon decided that he wasn't going to have any damned eagles around his piece of real estate/sky. 
The ensuing aerial battle was just wonderful, one of those rare things which take the breath away. How long it went on, heaven knows. Bob tried to photograph the battle with me shouting 'now' every time the Peregrine stooped, and it did with an awful lot of evil intent as the two accompanying photos show. The very odd-looking one, with the eagle in a very weird pose, is because it flipped over on to its back with its talons ready to repel attack. Heaven knows how many Gs the Peregrine was pulling when it zoomed out after each stoop. At one point the eagle made a feeble attempt to counter attack to which the falcon responded with what one must imagine was a sneer as it put on the after-burner and effortlessly climbed up 50 metres or so before resuming the offensive.
The eagle must have realised that it was on a hiding to nothing and left stage right, leaving a victorious Peregrine. At this point the female Peregrine appeared, a buxom wench with an apparently full crop, flew around a bit and disappeared. The male was also a very small bird, hardly big enough to be much more than a female Hobby, and scarcely more than half the size of the female.
The photos are Bob's.
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