BirdingInSpain

Listening is an intrinsic part of birding – hearing is one of the senses that should not be ignored. The listening birder can often make interesting discoveries: try doing a nighttime census, and you’ll be surprised at how far a dog’s bark will carry, how noisy the local motorway really is, and what strange sounds the Long-eared Owl makes!

Eloïsa Matheu has dedicated decades to listening to and recording wildlife sounds, mostly birds but not exlusively so. She has recordings of most of the bird species of the Iberian Peninsula as well as others from both the European and African continents. Hers are the CDs that the Catalan Institute for Ornithology (ICO) distributes to its members to help them identify the calls of the birds they may encounter while doing their Common Bird Counts. Hers are the wonderfully atmospheric wildlife sounds that grace the best pages of the BirdingInSpain.com website. I could go on, but I’m sure most of you get the idea…Eloïsa is THE bird sound recorder in Spain.

Eloïsa and I met up recently on a rather hopeful mission: I had heard the Wallcreeper singing at a wintering site in Montsec, a nice quiet spot, with no traffic, loud running water or barking dogs. It was a long shot, but Eloïsa was willing to give it a go.  Luckily she knows that birds have wings and don’t always use them to our convenience: no Wallcreeper this time, but she did manage to get Peregrine Falcon for the records.

Eloïsa’s CDs can be purchased from most major wildlife publication outlets, and from her directly at her website Alosa.