Bird's-eye view of hidden, historic Spain

Extremadura is one of Spain's best-kept secrets, rich in historic towns and exotic wildlife, and an ideal spot as temperatures…

Extremadura is one of Spain's best-kept secrets, rich in historic towns and exotic wildlife, and an ideal spot as temperatures cool, writes Paddy Woodworth.

The Finca Santa Marta provides its clients with a map which tells you to turn off the main road "where the storks are nesting in a tree". This sounded like an unreliable landmark outside the nesting season. But when I arrived there early one January evening, two storks paraglided into the tree, right on cue.

The birds immediately began to "make gazpacho". This noisy courtship ritual, a mutual clattering of their great beaks, reminds local people of the sounds which come from the kitchen when the ingredients for cold tomato soup, a life-saver in summer heat, are being pounded in a mortar. Other storks responded, all the way along a rutted lane into the finca's lovely courtyard, where a pair has recently established a new territory.

An avian welcome seemed appropriate, for the finca (farm) is not only an exceptionally characterful rural hotel, it is also an ideal base for some of the best bird-watching in Europe. If that doesn't grab you, it is also very close to Trujillo, and only an hour or so from other towns rich in historical heritage like Guadalupe and Mérida.

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Trujillo, perched romantically on precipitous cliffs in the middle of a great plain, was a major urban centre for the Romans and the Visigoths, and later for the Arab, Berber and Jewish civilisations which flowered in much of Spain for seven centuries.

After the victories of the Christians from the north, Trujillo played its part in the creation of another empire.

An illiterate but ambitious local swineherd called Francisco Pizarro followed his relative Hernan Cortes to the New World in the early 16th century. With a handful of men, and a lot of skulduggery, he seized the wealth of the Incas and became ruler of Peru in the name of Spain.

Pizarro still rides out on horseback in Trujillo's spacious and marvellously asymmetrical plaza, where a triumphalist sculptor has given him an uncanny resemblance to Darth Vader.

Trujillo prospered in the Spanish imperial period, but it has been in slow decline until very recently. For visitors, however, this can add to its charm, as one wanders deserted streets where every stone coat of arms on every abandoned palace seems to speak a little bit of history.

Trujillo is close to the centre of Extremadura, the landlocked province which borders central Portugal. Its countryside has often been regarded as a "lost" region of Spain, associated with harsh poverty and backwardness. There is great beauty, however, in its characteristic dehesas, ancient forests of cork oak and holm oak that have been thinned for pasture but not entirely eliminated. This creates a landscape where trees are scattered throughout meadows that stretch to the horizon and far beyond it, and which, after rain, can be studded with countless flowers.

In the shade of the trees, Iberian pigs feast on acorns, producing the jamón ibérica which is, deservedly, the star culinary delicacy of the region.

In winter, the pigs get some competition from tens of thousands of cranes, which migrate south from Scandinavia and Germany to fatten up for breeding. Walk off the road and you find yourself in an agricultural environment that would have looked familiar enough to Pizarro.

About half an hour north of Trujillo, this balmy plain shifts into a series of sharp escarpments and gorges, one of which contains the Tagus, one of Spain's great rivers. Monfrague Castle, which guards the approach to the river-crossing from the south, was long part of the frontier zone between Christians and Muslims, and is saturated in legends.

Princess Noeima, daughter of an Arab lord of the castle, fell in love with a Christian noble. All kinds of misfortunes followed, until her father confined her to the castle as a punishment for her inappropriate affections. On winter nights, says the legend, you can still find her within its walls, weeping pearl tears which flow into the Tagus, while a black star shines from her forehead.

On winter days, however, and on summer days too, visitors are now more likely to climb the steep slope to the castle, and the steeper steps within it, in pursuit of a natural rather a supernatural vision.

The tower stands on a ridge which is a major flight path for large birds of prey, offering one of the richest and most spectacular raptor displays in Europe.

The magic of this vantage point is that you see these birds not only at exceptionally close range, but also often from above, a privilege usually reserved for rock climbers. There is rarely a moment when two or three griffon vultures are not in the immediate vicinity of the tower, with a dozen more riding the thermals down the ridge, or returning along its spine. These huge birds seem to float on the air, their dark and light chocolate-coloured pinions warmly reflecting the sunlight.

Every few minutes, something new appears; two other species of vulture, and all of Spain's eagles and buzzards, have been seen here in the course of an exceptionally lucky couple of hours. Within 10 km of the castle, there are breeding pairs of great rarities like the imperial eagle and the black stork. The gorgeously harlequin bee-eater can be found in flocks, nesting like sand martins in nearby river banks.

The area immediately around Monfrague was recognised by UNESCO as an international biosphere reserve earlier this year, though it still only enjoys Spain's second-level conservation status as a "natural" rather than "national" park. Far outside the park's boundaries, however, you can find wildlife that most of western Europe can only dream about, even if urban and infrastructural development is steadily reducing the number of traditional rural environments.

Back in the Finca Santa Marta, you can still find flocks of azure-winged magpies to lure you off into the small olive groves and vineyards that once typified the more fertile parts of the region.

And in the finca itself, you can find rooms which have changed little in 100 years, and eat simple, well-prepared food in a dining room which was until recently an olive press. If your impression of Spain has been formed by Malaga or Marbella, Barcelona or Madrid, this is a good place to start exploring a whole new world.