Birds and contrasts

Spanish birds, Spanish skies.

Just enjoy the photos, taken at different places in northeast Spain while out looking for birds. Sometimes you get to see the birds you want to see, at others you don’t, but get a thrill from the places you go to all the same.

Maybe you know where these photos were taken?

Spanish landscapes

 

Spanish landscapes.

Spanish Landscapes.

Spanish landscapes.

Spanish landscapes.

Perhaps we should provide a list of the birds you can usually see at each site. Would that make it any easier?

The steppeland birds of Hotel Rincón del Cierzo

Are any of you birders planning a visit to Belchite? You know, Dupont’s Lark, Black-bellied Sandgrouse and associated company?

Here’s something for you to start familiarising yourself with the birds of this unique area:

Bird tiles at Rincón del Cierzo

And some of their local names too!

What a lovely detail this is for guests staying at the nearby Hotel Rincón del Cierzo. BirdingInSpain.com’s recommended accommodation for the Belchite steppes itinerary. We don’t recommend any old place you know, but rather the best-placed, well-regented and reasonably-priced establishments we know about. Do you get the picture?

If not, here it is again!

Bird tiles at Rincón del Cierzo

Birds as art?

  

I don’t know how far people in the know go these days to define art, but here’s a minor contribution to the debate.

White Wagtail Motacilla alba

And another one:

Red-billed Chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax

And another:

Red-billed Chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax

This one’s not art, it’s about Choughs…

Red-billed Choughs Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax

You could hang this one upside-down and it would be the right way up. Now isn’t that cool?

Whinchat reflection Saxicola rubetra

This one invites comment… I said “This one invites comment”….No?

Bird dream

 

The cuckoo flies out of the almond tree “Cuck-oo, cuck-oo!”

 Almond tree blossom at Alfés with snow-capped Montsant way in the ba

The cold spells we have been through here in Catalonia have ensured that the Almond Trees didn’t start flowering until close to the end of February. In more settled, warmer winters flowering may advance a couple of weeks or even more, which puts the entire almond harvest at great risk from a late frost.

It’s a time worth waiting for. The days are drawing out, and one can easily be fooled into thinking that spring is already here. Especially when the strident tones of the marvellous Great Spotted Cuckoo ring out from a nearby tree on the plains, and I realize that it is not someone calling me on my mobile phone (the dial tone is a Great Spotted Cuckoo as chance would have it!) but rather the real thing.

Great Spotted Cuckoo Clamator glandarius

Great Spotted Cuckoo Clamator glandarius

Almond tree blossom with Great Spotted Cuckoos, bliss! 

I’m glad February is gone

  

I’m glad February is gone,

it usually gets me in a foul mood

Me in February

And then when I go out to do a spot of birding,

just to calm down a little bit,

I start seeing and hearing some strange things…

Eagle Air France

 

Little Owl Show

 

 Lammergeier display

 

Am I the only one who’s glad February is behind us?