There is a connection between a special guest who’ll
be meeting our group in Extremadura and a spreadsheet in the Honeyguide office.
The special guest is Marcelino Cardalliaguet Guerra – we know him as Marce – who is SEO’s officer working in Extremadura. SEO – in full Sociedad Española de Ornitología – is the BirdLife partner in Spain, which has been supported by Honeyguide donations linked to our holidays in Spain over many years. Marce will visit our group in Extremadura in the second half of March 2026 to celebrate this longstanding support.
Tozo River, Extremadura.
Marce’s visit also marks the end of an era. This is Honeyguide’s final group at Martin and Claudia Kelsey's accommodation, their Casa Rural called Casa El Recuerdo, a retirement planned for some time. 2026/27 may also be Honeyguide’s final year.
Marce receives a cheque from Chris, Extremadura 2014 (we use bank transfers now).
So it’s a good moment to reflect,
and that’s where the spreadsheet comes in – to assemble and check on totals
raised by Honeyguide for SEO. This blog is to share the outcome, and especially
the headline: £24,141 donated to SEO since 1991. That total includes sums
raised by five different holidays in Spain (the details follow on below), and is 15% of the grand total of £165,317 donated by
Honeyguide so far to conservation projects (the sums go to the end of 2025).
Of that £24,141 donated to SEO, most is from two holidays, Extremadura and the Spanish Pyrenees.
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| Another year, another cheque: Martin Kelsey gives Marce the Honeyguide donation. |
The largest element of this sum is £11,898 donated to SEO in Extremadura, raised through 28 holiday groups in Extremadura. The first three of these were based in Hotel Las Cigüeñas in Trujillo, then 21 staying at Finca Santa Marta, and four, in the post-Covid years, at Casa El Recuerdo.
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| Berdún, Spanish Pyrenees, October 2024. |
A similar sum, £10,053, has been raised by 27 Honeyguide groups in the Spanish Pyrenees. All these groups stayed in Berdún. The first 18 of these, 1991-2006, stayed at the Painting School, including three groups in 1996. Since 2008, nine groups have stayed at Casa Sarasa.
Holidays in three other Spanish destinations have also raised money for SEO. Five holidays in Fuerteventura, all guided by David Collins, have raised £1,410 for SEO’s work in the Canary Islands.
Two holidays in South of Salamanca have raised £490 towards raptor protection in that region. One of our Picos de Europa holidays donated to SEO Cantabria, in 2022 when we visited SEO’s urban nature reserve in Santander before our flight back to the UK.
I should add that holidays in other parts of Spain have contributed to other Spanish conservation work. In the Balearics (Menorca and Mallorca) we support GOB (Grup Balear d'Ornitologia i Defensa de la Naturalesa – the Balearic Ornithological Group). In Valencia we support ringing group Grupo de Anillamiento Pit-Roig. In the Picos de Europa, our main donation goes to butterfly NGO Asociación Zerynthia. In Tarifa we have supported Migres, which monitors bird migration though the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Ornithological Group of Estrecho (GOES).
The link with SEO has not ended. In 2026, there will be further donations to SEO from holidays in Extremadura and South of Salamanca, and to Zerynthia from our Picos de Europa group.
There is more information about Honeyguide’s
donations to conservation projects in blogs:
- A record conservation donation from Honeyguide in 2025 December 2025
- Conservation donations from Honeyguide in 2024 January 2025.
- Conservation donations from Honeyguide in 2023 November 2023
- … and on our Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust web page.
Chris Durdin, March 2026
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