BirdingInSpain

There are no Black Grouse in Spain, as this is a bird that inhabits the moors, bogs and forests of central and northern Europe. The Black Grouse is a sedenteray species, in decline over much of its range. Fortunate are those who have seen this handsome bird, or heard its far-carrying, bubbling song. More fortunate still is Erlend Haarberg: his mission for the Wild Wonders of Europe was to photograph Black Grouse on a lek in Sweden. 

Of course he succeeded, and admirably. But don’t take our word for it, read the original article here.

O si prefieres, puedes leer el artículo en castellano.  

It was a windy day on the Ebro valley plains for me and the Liberty Bird group from Switzerland. Looking for Dupont’s Larks was going to be hard work, luckily we had taken out our own insurance policy and were staying two nights at our hotel in nearby Lécera.

All told we had some pretty good birding. The highlights of one day and one morning’s birding in the plains were: Dupont’s Lark (seen on the second morning), Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, Black-bellied Sandgrouse, Black Wheatear, Golden Eagle, Egyptian Vulture, Montagu’s Harrier, Melodious Warbler, Wryneck, Tawny Pipit, Black-eared Wheatear and Lesser Kestrel.

Lesser Kestrel. Photo by Beat Rüegger

Next stop: the steppes between Candasnos and Ontiñena. Here our main birds were Black-necked Grebe, Red-crested Pochard, Booted Eagle, Little Bustard, Spectacled Warbler and Thekla Lark.

Booted Eagle. Photo by Beat Rüegger.

Then wonderful sunny weather in the Pyrenees just had to be shared with some special birds too. Lammergeier, Citril Finch, Alpine Chough, Honey Buzzard, Alpine Swift, Wryneck, Water Pipit and Bonelli’s Warbler are the birds that didn’t let us down in the mountains.

Western Bonelli’s Warbler. Photo by Beat Rüegger.

The next couple of days were spent in the plains and Pre-Pyrenees not far from my home town, Lleida. Everybody will remember the Ortolan Bunting, and I’m sure most will recall Rock Sparrow, Orphean Warbler, Blue Rock Thrush and the Sardinian Warbler. Sadly, I was the only one to see the female Rock Thrush at Mont-roig.

Ortolan Bunting. Photo by Beat Rüegger.

Oh yes! I should have mentioned the Bonelli’s Eagles, Little Bustards, Little Owls, Rollers, Stone Curlews and Bearded Tits. How forgetful I am at times. 

The Ebro Delta held up well to our scrutiny too. One of the rarer birds we saw was a handsome summer-plumaged Marsh Sandpiper, but there were a lot more waders to choose from. An assortment of little avian delights also included Temminck’s Stint, Little Bittern, Collared Pratincole and Mediterranean Gull. I am not going to write a long and rather tedious list of Ebro Delta bird names, so it should be enough to say we saw just about everything you could expect to see in the Ebro Delta in early May. 

See more of Beat Rüeggers photos from his Spanish and other bird tours on his website:

http://www.ornitour.ch/Photo_Galerie/PGSpanienreise09.html

Collared Pratincole. Photo by Beat Rüegger.

The whole trip ended with a list of 210 bird species in all – very good, but try saying them all in Swiss German!

Birding is brill. Especially in the spring in northeast Spain.  But not all is birds, or so they tell me.

What else is there? Well, you could just pop in this part of Spain to see the spectacular poppy fields all over the lowlands this spring. Although don’t delay for too long, as they’re already on their way out.

Photos by Gerd Herren

Just in case you can’t make it I would like to share a couple of images of the poppy-strewn drylands of Balaguer with you all. Photos taken by my friend Gerd Herren who visited us with his wife Verónica earlier this month. Enjoy!

A fine walk with a group of keen birding newbies from the castle of Montsonís was one of the last local activities I had the joy of organizing before starting serious tour work. We all enjoyed a beautiful spring day and a variety of good birds too: a pair of Egyptian Vultures making baby Egyptian Vultures, and also a pair of Bonelli’s Eagles. We had good looks at Bonelli’s Warbler, Chaffinch, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Swallow, House Martin, Crag Martin, Blackcap and Robin. I enjoyed it and, most importantly, so did the public.

Then came Tom and his lovely lady from Germany. Tom is a photographer, and to make bird photographers at least moderately happy is by no means an easy job. Well, thanks to the weather I had an even more complicated task. Day 1 came down to a drive in the increasingly heavy rain. On Day 2 I convinced them to visit Loarre castle, where it had just been snowing! It was really cold and Tom was about to pack his bags and leave. Luckily we had a clear spell around midday when the discovery of a dead sheep on a farm allowed him to get some very good shots of Egyptian Vulture, Griffon Vulture and Red Kite. Another castle nearby also provided the goods in the form of Chough, Spectacled Warbler and Blue Rock Thrush.

Unfortunately we were not together when I watched a Lammergeier breaking a bone later in the afternoon.  

On day 3 we were assailed by a buffeting wind – photos of Sardinian Warbler and Scarce Swallowtail were the hard-earned fruits of our labours that day.

Tom was then going to head on down to Extremadura. I hope he had better luck with this crazy spring weather!

March has come and gone again and so I’d better get in this 3rd Hotspot report before the guiding season comes into full swing and keeps me away from my beloved keyboard.

This March of 2009 there were days when spring was in the air; sometimes one could even feel the scorch of a summer sun; then there were days when we all took two steps back into winter. That was confusing enough for us poor mortal humans, so just imagine what fresh migrant birds must have felt like, just off the boat from Africa.

Nevertheless, the migrants did arrive. New Hotspot birds of the month included some of the usual common migrants: Yellow Wagtail, Tree Pipit, House Martin, Swallow, Black-winged Stilt, Subalpine Warbler and Willow Warbler. Great Spotted Cuckoos and Stone Curlews also returned early in the month and are now well and truly established. A single female Red-crested Pochard at the Estany d’Ivars was a hoped-for addition to the Hotspot list, and mid-month a small party of Garganeys also put in an appearance. Montsec attracted raptors in the form of Egyptian Vulture, Black Kite and  Short-toed Eagle. The biggest surprise I had though was spotting a female Little Crake at the Estany d’Ivars in the middle of the month. Great stuff!

Great Spotted Cuckoo. Great bird, lousy photo.

The 50km Hotring seemed determined to keep in on the act, with the first Night Heron, Purple Heron, Osprey and Little Ringed Plover. Lesser Short-toed Lark was another species seen in the Hotring but unlikely to occur in the Hotspot. Oh well.

Fish-eating Osprey. Not Osprey-eating fish.

And on the note of species unlikely to occur in the Hotspot the prize went to a Great Bustard which came to meet me near Utxesa on the 17th March. One of the very few records of this marvellous species for Catalunya in the last few decades. What a shame it didn’t come with some friends to settle down and raise a family.

Mont-roig through the window (fortunately not mine)

Last week one of those nice birdie surprises came to me in a rather large package. The first Great Bustard to be recorded in Catalunya for almost 14 years flew past me as I was out on the drylands of Lleida trying to get close to a couple of Great Spotted Cuckoos. Of course I had a good idea of the unusualness of the sighting, although I had to check the bibliography to get the full details: the previous record of the Great Bustard in Catalunya was that of 2 birds at Belianes between 15th and 22nd July 1995. The previous record to that one dates back to August 1987.

Displaying Great Bustard as depicted in “Flying over the Pyrenees, standing on the plains”

The sighting caused quite a stir among the local birders and forum-followers. I received congratulations, and even a couple of phone calls, their makers keen to get more details. And could the observation be used to illustrate importance of the remaining drylands in Lleida, threatened by a badly thought out irrigation scheme?

Who is not seduced by the idea of the Great Bustard making a comeback to Catalunya as a breeding bird, after an absence of half a century? But let’s get real: no more than 80 Great Bustards remain in the Monegros, the nearest regular site for the species, and the impending pincer movement of the Gran Scala casino complex and the Segarra-Garrigues irrigation scheme is most unlikely to leave them with many options for recolonisation of lost territory. 

Escriure una petita introducció sobre l’observació dels ocells al Montsec? Com començar? No ho sabia. Així, un dia esplèndid de primavera vaig agafar els prismàtics i vaig fer una visita als camps, bosquets i cims airosos de Montsec, buscant inspiració en la seva solitut i majestuositat.

La veritat és que la cosa no comencava massa bé. Hi havien moltes distraccions: grupets d’abellerols melosos de colors llampants, una guatlla cantant “set-per-vuit”, la seva veu ondulant com el blat en la brisa lleugera. Un destell repentí de colors quan una puput aixecà el vol. La dolça melangia d’un parell de cotolius.

Bee-eater by Joan Manel Puig 

5 espècies de tallarols estaven en plena forma anunciant-se propietaris de les mates, les alzines i els roures. 5 espècies! Silenci!! Tot aquell xibarri no em deixava pensar. 

Orphean Warbler by Jan-Michael Breider 

Així vaig rependre el camí. Lluny cantava un hortolà, orgullós d’haver tornat de l’Africa a la seva terra natal. Després una volada de gralles de bec-vermell van interrompre els meus pensaments amb les seves acrobàcies aèries.

A dalt de la serrelada el pas de voltors era continuo, però vaig fer un esforç sobrehumà per no fer-los cas, al igual que la merla roquera que cantava insistentment al meu darrere. Però, quan un trencalòs va planejar davant meu mirant-me de fit a fit als ulls, aleshores vaig adonar-me’n que els ocells m’havien guanyat la partida.

Griffon Vultures by Franck Renard 

Steve West

Dalmatian Pelicans at Lake Kerkini, Greece. Photo by Jari Peltomäki. 

To all appearances Jari Peltomäki is a lucky man: he is an excellent wildlife photographer – and that fact is widely recognised – and he has recently spent 10 days at Lake Kerkini in Greece photographing the Dalmatian Pelicans.

Read a little about Jari’s encounters with the Pelican with the frizzy hairdo, fisherman Tom and more on the Wild Wonders blog. Days 9 and 10 have also been translated into Spanish by our translation team.

Pos, eso, como diría mi compañero Jordi Bas. Quiero saber si vale la pena escribir o traducir artículos ya existentes en el blog de BirdingInSpain.com en castellano, o incluso en català.

¿Hay una audiencia castellanoparlante que sigue este blog? ¿Quereís alguna cosita en vuestra lengua? ¿O entendeís perfectamente el inglés? O bien, quizás no hay nadie ahí fuera…

Si me enviaís algun comentario haré los ajustes necesarios. Si no, pos, sigamos así.

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.