{"id":208,"date":"2008-11-12T17:58:36","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T15:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/birding-and-wildlife-trips\/trip-report-birding-in-northeast-spain\/"},"modified":"2008-11-12T17:58:36","modified_gmt":"2008-11-12T15:58:36","slug":"trip-report-birding-in-northeast-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/birding-and-wildlife-trips\/trip-report-birding-in-northeast-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"Trip report birding in northeast Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Northeast Spain, September 6-19, 2008<\/strong> (Edited for brevity version; photos added by BirdingInSpain.com)<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is the birding summary of our (Cheryl and Kurt Gaskill and Molly and Peter Ross) September trip to Spain, centered about 200 km on Barcelona.<\/p>\n

In total, we birded for an estimated 51.5 hours in about 8 days.\u00a0 Notes indicate 167 species and over 8800 individuals were observed and Kurt tallied about 45 lifers and Peter 68.<\/p>\n

References we used were the excellent book by Steve West, \u201cWhere the Birds are in Northeast Spain<\/strong>\u201d. We found Palmer and Fidel\u2019s \u201cA Birdwatching Guide to Eastern Spain,\u201d Arlequin Press, Chelmsford, 2001 of some value.\u00a0 Of great value was the website \u201cBirding in Spain,\u201d (http:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/ mainly by Steve West) which was consulted extensively before the trip. Overnight accommodations at the key sites of Barcelona, Ebro Delta, Alcaniz, Montsonis, Arseguel (west of La Seu d\u2019Urgell in the Pyrenees), and Siurana were secured before the trip began.<\/p>\n

\"Where<\/p>\n

We drove down to the Ebro Delta<\/strong> late Thursday Sept 11 and the next day we began birding.\u00a0 Despite the strong NW winds this day and the next, it was one of the best birding sites for the trip!\u00a0 The majority (ca. 80%) of the Ebro Delta<\/strong> is cultivated for rice, but it still has many wetlands plus beach\/shore areas; it is a well-known breeding area for Andouin\u2019s Gull.<\/p>\n

We began birding and quickly saw many shorebirds such as Black-tailed Godwits and Curlew Sandpipers; there were lots of dark-winged terns plus the occasional Zitting Cisticola.\u00a0 All 3 of the dark-winged terns were spotted that first morning:\u00a0 Black, White-winged and Whiskered Terns.\u00a0 We birded throughout the day on the north side of the Ebro River<\/strong>, ending at a large hide near our hotel that overlooked a brackish pond filled with waterfowl and coots (including the Red-knobbed Coot<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

\"Crested<\/p>\n

Crested Coot (or Red-knobbed Coot if you prefer)<\/em><\/p>\n

The next morning we concentrated on the south side of the Ebro River.\u00a0 The best location was the Riet Vell wetland which consisted of about 4 man-made cells, each about 2 acres, with various levels of water.\u00a0 We tallied 18 species of shorebird at Riet Vell<\/strong> and the total included the only Temminck\u2019s Stint of the trip.<\/p>\n

Overall, the Ebro Delta<\/strong> added 82 trip species to our list, sometimes in impressive numbers, and the species found only here were: Great Crested Grebe, European Shag, Black-crowned Night Heron, Squacco Heron, Great (White) Egret, Glossy Ibis (ca. 365), Greater Flamingo (ca. 260), Common Shelduck, Gadwall, Northern Pintail, Red-crested Pochard, Common Pochard, Merlin, Common Moorhen, Purple Swamphen, Eurasian Coot (ca. 500), Red-knobbed (or Crested) Coot, Black-winged Stilt, Pied Avocet, Common Ringed Plover, Kentish Plover, Sanderling, Little Stint, Temminck\u2019s Stint, Curlew Sandpiper, Black-tailed Godwit, Spotted Redshank, Marsh Sandpiper, Green Sandpiper, Mediterranean Gull (a beautiful gull), Andouin\u2019s Gull (another beautiful gull), Gull-billed, Caspian, Sandwich, Common, Whiskered, Black and White-winged Terns, Lesser Short-toed Lark, Northern Wheatear, Savi\u2019s Warbler, Sedge Warbler, and Eurasian Tree Sparrow.\u00a0 In addition, the Little Egret numbers (ca. 220) were wonderful.<\/p>\n

\"Birding<\/p>\n

Purple Gallinule and Red-crested Pochard <\/em><\/p>\n

Part 2 soon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Northeast Spain, September 6-19, 2008 (Edited for brevity version; photos added by BirdingInSpain.com) Here is the birding summary of our (Cheryl and Kurt Gaskill and Molly and Peter Ross) September trip to Spain, centered about 200 km on Barcelona. In total, we birded for an estimated 51.5 hours in about 8 days.\u00a0 Notes indicate 167 […]<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding-and-wildlife-trips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7I752-3m","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208","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=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}