{"id":122,"date":"2008-05-31T20:31:37","date_gmt":"2008-05-31T18:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/general\/roller-in-spain-needs-home\/"},"modified":"2008-05-31T20:31:37","modified_gmt":"2008-05-31T18:31:37","slug":"roller-in-spain-needs-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/general\/roller-in-spain-needs-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Roller in Spain needs home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Because of rising house prices in <strong>Spain<\/strong>, exacerbated by last year&#8217;s mortgage crisis and the slump in the construction trade decent affordable <strong>accommodation<\/strong> is getting hard to find.  That&#8217;s especially so in the countryside and for new arrivals attempting to make themselves a home where they can raise a family. By means of illustration take a look at this notice found hanging on an almond tree in the drylands of <strong>Bellmunt<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Fertile adult female <strong>Roller<\/strong> seeking dazzling adult male <strong>Roller<\/strong>. Must be home owner, preferably of sizeable hole in old tree, although new nest box also accepted. Ability to catch large insects and lizards and to carry out <strong>aerial displays<\/strong> will also be valued, although home ownership is a pre-requisite for breeding consent. Non-territorial male Rollers, and all female Rollers, please abstain.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Luckily Rollers can still be seen in the drylands of Bellmunt, as well as in other dryland areas around <strong>Lleida<\/strong>, although decent nest sites are obviously scarce. Apart from the extent of suitable habitat, this is probably the single most important factor limiting the size of the <strong>Roller populations in northeast Spain<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Birders<\/strong> who have visited Extremadura are probably familiar with the <strong>nest boxes<\/strong> located on telegraph poles by the side of the road in certain areas. These nest boxes are largely aimed at <strong>Rollers<\/strong> and have been very successful. Isn&#8217;t it time to follow their example and put up some nest boxes for the Rollers reaching <strong>northeast Spain<\/strong> every spring?<\/p>\n<p>This year&#8217;s breeding season is well under way, but it&#8217;s never too late to plan ahead and prepare to set up some <strong>Roller nest boxes<\/strong> before the <strong>drylands<\/strong> get plastered with signs like the one above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because of rising house prices in Spain, exacerbated by last year&#8217;s mortgage crisis and the slump in the construction trade decent affordable accommodation is getting hard to find. That&#8217;s especially so in the countryside and for new arrivals attempting to make themselves a home where they can raise a family. By means of illustration take [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-in-spain","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7I752-1Y","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}