When I explained to my brother that I was going to be sitting in a photography hide hoping and waiting that an Iberian Lynx would walk by, for 11+ hours a day and for three consecutive days, he immediately informed me that I needed an 'intervention'. To begin, my first experience in a Photography hide consisted of me sitting alone and in silence in a 2m x 1.5m wood and metal hut from 630am-1pm and 4pm-915pm. Importantly, the glass allows us to see out yet the animals simply see themselves in a mirror when they look at it. Thankfully, this is Spain so they naturally provided us a civilized three hour lunch break which I put to good use.

Sometime last year, I became fascinated with the Iberian Lynx because only 20 years ago there were no more than 100 in existence and most of them were in Spain where I also live. Furthermore, this species is simply very unique and is notably about half the size of its American cousin the Bobcat. Today, no more than 1700 Iberian Lynx are left alive on the entire planet, of which 1400 are in Spain and 12-14 of those are here on this reserve.

When I booked the trip, I was told that there would be a chair to sit on which turned out to be of good quality and reminded me of the $600 Aeron chairs that were popular during the dot-com boom. So that was nice. After I paid my deposit, I was notified that I could not leave the hide whatsoever other than upon arrival and departure and there are no bathrooms in the hides. The solution - bring a jar in which to relieve myself. Without going into any inappropriate details, I must share that I underestimated the size of my bladder and the jar was topped off at 1030am leaving me with a small sense of panic that I would have to go again before 1pm. Fortunately, that was not the case. Consequently, for the remaining two days, I implemented a minimum hydration strategy that worked well.

About 5 or 6 meters In front of each of the hides is a watering hole measuring about 2m in diameter that is maintained by the reserve. As one can imagine, this attracts loads of birds and ideally the occasional Iberian Lynx. It is important to note that the hides are properly designed and built so that the photographers are at just above ground level when seated creating an awesome eye-level perspective with which to capture wildlife images. When you have a look at the images in the Iberian Lynx gallery you will notice the intense gaze of the lynx as he looks right at me. That's because he hears my breathing and my heartbeat. See my images below:

During the first of my six sessions, it was long yet really exciting. I saw lots of birds, rabbits and even a few Red Partridges which made me happy to be connecting with nature. Then, during session two in the evening, the magic happened and I saw my first live Iberian Lynx! I was focusing on a rabbit to my left and wondering to myself what a cool shot it would be to get a rabbit in the foreground and a Lynx walking by in the background...2 seconds later THAT actually happened! Unfortunately, I botched the focus and neither were in focus in the end. I choose to tell myself that autofocus was stuck focusing on a blade of grass and it wasn't my fault at all. Soon thereafter, I got my focusing sorted out and captured this striking image. Below one can see an image of Queen, a seven year-old female and my first Iberian Lynx sighting, captured with some fortunate backlighting from the sunset during golden hour.