{"id":318,"date":"2009-03-26T11:16:30","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T09:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/birds-in-spain\/bustard-buzz\/"},"modified":"2009-03-26T11:16:30","modified_gmt":"2009-03-26T09:16:30","slug":"bustard-buzz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/birds-in-spain\/bustard-buzz\/","title":{"rendered":"Bustard Buzz"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week one of those nice birdie surprises came to me in a rather large package. The first <strong>Great Bustard<\/strong> to be recorded in <strong>Catalunya<\/strong> for almost 14 years flew past me as I was out on the <strong>drylands of Lleida<\/strong> trying to get close to a couple of <strong>Great Spotted Cuckoos<\/strong>. Of course I had a good idea of the unusualness of the sighting, although I had to check the bibliography to get the full details:\u00a0the previous\u00a0record of the <strong>Great Bustard\u00a0in Catalunya<\/strong> was that\u00a0of 2 birds at Belianes between 15th and 22nd July 1995. The previous record to that one dates back to August 1987.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/pioc.jpg\" alt=\"Great Bustard display\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Displaying Great Bustard as depicted in &#8220;Flying over the Pyrenees, standing on the plains&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The sighting caused quite a stir among\u00a0the local birders and forum-followers. I received congratulations, and even a couple of phone calls, their makers keen to get more details. And could the observation be used\u00a0to illustrate importance of the remaining drylands in Lleida, threatened by a badly thought out irrigation scheme?<\/p>\n<p>Who is not seduced by the idea of the <strong>Great Bustard<\/strong> making a comeback to Catalunya as a breeding bird, after an absence of half a century? But let&#8217;s get real: no more than 80 Great Bustards remain in the <strong>Monegros<\/strong>, the nearest regular site for the species, and the impending pincer movement of the <strong>Gran Scala casino complex<\/strong> and the <strong>Segarra-Garrigues irrigation scheme<\/strong> is most unlikely to\u00a0leave them with many options for recolonisation of lost territory.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week one of those nice birdie surprises came to me in a rather large package. The first Great Bustard to be recorded in Catalunya for almost 14 years flew past me as I was out on the drylands of Lleida trying to get close to a couple of Great Spotted Cuckoos. Of course I [&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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-318","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\/p7I752-58","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","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=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}