{"id":1556,"date":"2020-07-10T10:16:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T09:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/?p=1556"},"modified":"2020-07-07T18:17:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T17:17:36","slug":"hotspot-birding-pre-lockdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/birds-in-spain\/hotspot-birding-pre-lockdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Hotspot birding: pre-lockdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

February was a quiet month, <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

and I must admit I failed dismally in seeing any of my more “remotely possible” target birds I had set for the month – things like Yellowhammer, Crossbill, Jack Snipe…<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, there was a good show of migrating Common Crane<\/strong>s, including a flock or two migrating over our dwelling in Lleida as night fell. Red Crested Pochard<\/strong> was the only noteworthy new species until the arrival of March saw a change of pace. First of all I made a local “twitch” to see a male Ferruginous Duck<\/strong> on the extreme western edge of the Hotspot, and on the same day went to check on the Moustached Warbler<\/strong>s, to see if they were singing – and they were.<\/p>\n

\"Red-crested

Red-crested Pochard photo by Beat R\u00fcegger<\/p><\/div>\n

My first Zitting Cisticola of the year made me wait until the 8th March, and then the next day I was out on the job, guiding Vreni, a nice lady from Switzerland, around my home patch. That meant I was able to rake in many of the early migrants – swallows, house martins and the like – as well as a single Black-tailed Godwit at the Estany d’Ivars.<\/p>\n

\"Egyptian

Egyptian Vulture, photo by Beat R\u00fcegger<\/p><\/div>\n

On the 11th March, again with Vreni we had a good run on the plains, with singing Dupont’s Lark<\/strong>, and at least 6 Lesser Short-toed Larks, 2 sprightly and entertaining Great Spotted Cuckoos<\/strong> and a Short-toed Eagle. The next day, and the last for Vreni, the Hotspot list grew with 2 more species: Garganey and Egyptian Vulture<\/strong>. With the total now at 148 things were going smoothly, and then, well then the world changed for us all with the lockdown announcement…<\/p>\n\n\n

we had a good run on the plains, with singing Dupont’s Lark, and at least 6 Lesser Short-toed Larks <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February was a quiet month, and I must admit I failed dismally in seeing any of my more “remotely possible” target birds I had set for the month – things like Yellowhammer, Crossbill, Jack Snipe… Nevertheless, there was a good show of migrating Common Cranes, including a flock or two migrating over our dwelling in […]<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-in-spain"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7I752-p6","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556","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=1556"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1594,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions\/1594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}