{"id":1365,"date":"2019-11-18T18:53:05","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T16:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2019-11-18T18:53:05","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T16:53:05","slug":"winter-has-come-there-are-birds-to-be-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/general\/winter-has-come-there-are-birds-to-be-seen\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter has come, there are birds to be seen!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winter is more than Wallcreepers<\/p>\n

Is winter coming, or is it here already? Judging from our recent 6 days in the field in northeast Spain,<\/strong> and comparing them to what was happening in the region only the week before, it is tempting to say that winter is indeed here. The snow on the Pyrenees<\/strong> lies thick at the summits, and the wind is cold. However, only last week we were still drifting along on a seemingly never-ending summer, and in our birding minds this led to growing apprehension for the apparent lack of Wallcreepers<\/strong> in their usual wintering haunts in the Pre-Pyrenees. But all that changed in the first week in November.<\/p>\n

\"Winter

Winter Wallcreeper, Tichodroma muraria<\/p><\/div>\n

Our first tingle of excitement with incoming wintering birds<\/strong> was when we stumbled on a mixed flock of Chaffinches and Bramblings<\/strong> on the edge of Lleida. But the Bramblings outnumbered the Chaffinches! To put that in context, sometimes we go for whole winters and might only see one or two Bramblings here.<\/p>\n

Then, a few days later, we stopped to watch a field of Mistle Thrushes and discovered that in fact there were no fewer than 4 species of thrush hopping about in that field: Mistle, Song, Fieldfare and Redwing<\/strong>. Later that day and the next we came across Redwings on several occasions. Only a year ago I was thinking that Redwings were almost a thing of past winters in our part of Spain, having seen so few in the last ten years or so.<\/p>\n

\"Hawfinch,

Hawfinch, Coccothraustes coccothraustes<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cAll we need now is a Hawfinch<\/strong> or two to complete the winter visitor set\u201d I said to Erica and Jonas as we drove along after seeing the thrushes. Well, would you believe it \u2026 in under an hour we were watching several Hawfinches perched on top of dead trees, and that without making a detour from our return route to the hotel.<\/p>\n

On a personal note the arrival of this winter weather was in the nick of time. We saw Wallcreepers at 3 different locations<\/strong>, one each on successive days, as well as a record number of 10 Alpine Accentors<\/strong> at one particular location. This was a great relief, as it meant we were not using the Wallcreeper\u2019s name in vain when promoting our \u201cWinter Wallcreeper Tours<\/strong>\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Alpine

Alpine Accentor, Prunella collaris. By Franck Renard.<\/p><\/div>\n

And then there were Robins every 50 metres along the road, little groups of Siskins calling as they flew overhead and, in the Ebro Delta, a rare Herring Gull<\/strong> from the north, and an even rarer Rough-legged Buzzard<\/strong> from the east. Well, yes, winter is here, and the birding looks like it\u2019s going to be fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winter is more than Wallcreepers Is winter coming, or is it here already? Judging from our recent 6 days in the field in northeast Spain, and comparing them to what was happening in the region only the week before, it is tempting to say that winter is indeed here. The snow on the Pyrenees lies […]<\/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":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding-and-wildlife-trips","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7I752-m1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365","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=1365"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1381,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions\/1381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}