![\"Dupont\u2019s](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/duponts-lark2.jpg\")
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Dupont’s Lark, Belchite, Spain <\/em><\/p>\n Before crossing the Ebro River near Quinto, we stopped at a riparian area next to planted fields and found a Hobby, a few Common Buzzards, Purple Heron, Kingfishers and various passerines, including Hoopoe and Corn Bunting.\u00a0 At Lleida<\/strong>, we headed north to our destination where we stayed at Montson\u00eds, near the Montsec Range<\/strong>.\u00a0 This was a wonderful, very picturesque rural valley<\/strong> with a small castle. Breakfast the next morning at our accommodation was fantastic!\u00a0 Here we got lucky and encountered Steve West (who was meeting a client) and he kindly gave us a Montsec Birding Trail map<\/strong> and a few pointers. Thanks Steve!<\/p>\n Montson\u00eds near the Montsec Range <\/em><\/p>\n The next morning we followed Lleida birding routes near Balaguer followed by a trip to the Alf\u00e9s drylands<\/strong>, both suggested by the web site, and we were not disappointed. We quickly found a flock of 55 Stone Curlews and near by were 20 Red-legged Partridges. Another location yielded up two Honey Buzzards and two beautiful Black-winged Kites. Also noted were our first Red Kite, a few Bee-eaters hawking insects over the forest, Short-toed Eagle (the latter near Aspa), more Green Woodpeckers, our only Tawny Pipit for the trip, our only Black Wheatear, Reed Warbler, Lesser Gray Shrike (ID by plumage and call note), and Woodchat Shrike.<\/p>\n Bee-eater <\/em><\/p>\n We headed north to the Pyrenees.\u00a0 Our next stop was a small hotel in a small village known as Arseguel which is about 10 km east of La Seu d\u2019Urgell.\u00a0 Upon arrival, we saw our first Cirl and Rock Buntings, Citril Finch<\/strong> and Orphean Warbler<\/strong> and heard a calling juvenile Scops Owl at night after dinner. The food at our hotel was amazing – with yet more excellent vino tinto.\u00a0 We stayed two nights.<\/p>\n After visiting a few locations, we headed up to the Coll de Pal outside of Baga hoping for a few alpine species late in the afternoon. We were not disappointed!\u00a0 The alpine meadows near the rock wall produced an Alpine Accentor, and two Lammergeiers!\u00a0 The latter are amazing birds with huge wingspans \u2013 over 8 feet \u2013 are quite long \u2013 almost 4 feet – and have foot-long tails.\u00a0 Beautiful!<\/p>\n Our last day was short for birding as we needed to depart for the Barcelona airport. We packed our bags and loaded the car and we were off. The most noteworthy thing was the slow traffic through Barcelona.<\/p>\n This trip was better than originally envisioned, although several common species were never found.\u00a0 This was mainly due to a time deficit \u2013 we did not have time to visit several great sites for birds like Blue Rock Thrush or Bonelli\u2019s Eagle or Slender-billed Gull.\u00a0 But, since we would like to return, I can only say that next time we will get them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Part 2) We traveled west to the Belchite area.\u00a0 The land was clearly more arid and olive tree groves gave way to grasslands and other low vegetation.\u00a0 We sought out the El Planer\u00f3n refuge outside of Belchite.\u00a0 Using directions from the website, we traveled the refuge roads for short distances and found Booted Eagles.\u00a0 At […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7I752-3s","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","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=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/montsonis.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Bee-eater\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/beeeater.jpg\")
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