{"id":320,"date":"2009-04-10T18:15:56","date_gmt":"2009-04-10T16:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/birds-in-spain\/birding-in-spain-3rd-hotspot-report\/"},"modified":"2009-04-10T18:18:55","modified_gmt":"2009-04-10T16:18:55","slug":"birding-in-spain-3rd-hotspot-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/birds-in-spain\/birding-in-spain-3rd-hotspot-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Birding In Spain: 3rd Hotspot Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>March has come and gone again and so I&#8217;d better get in this <strong>3rd Hotspot report<\/strong> before the guiding season comes into full swing and keeps me away from my beloved keyboard.<\/p>\n<p>This March of 2009 there were days when <strong>spring was in the air<\/strong>; sometimes one could even feel the scorch of a summer sun; then there were days when we all took two steps <strong>back into winter<\/strong>. That was confusing enough for us poor mortal humans, so just imagine what <strong>fresh migrant birds<\/strong> must have felt like, just off the boat from Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, the migrants did arrive. New Hotspot birds of the month included some of the usual common migrants:\u00a0Yellow Wagtail, Tree Pipit, House Martin,\u00a0Swallow, Black-winged Stilt,\u00a0Subalpine Warbler and\u00a0Willow Warbler. <strong>Great Spotted Cuckoos<\/strong> and <strong>Stone Curlews<\/strong> also returned early in the month and are now well and truly established. A single female\u00a0Red-crested Pochard at the <strong>Estany d&#8217;Ivars<\/strong> was a hoped-for addition to the Hotspot list, and mid-month a small party of Garganeys also put in an appearance.\u00a0<strong>Montsec<\/strong> attracted raptors in the form of\u00a0<strong>Egyptian Vulture<\/strong>, <strong>Black Kite<\/strong> and\u00a0 <strong>Short-toed Eagle<\/strong>. The biggest surprise I had though was spotting a <strong>female Little Crake<\/strong> at the Estany d&#8217;Ivars in the middle of the month. Great stuff!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/gscuckoo.jpg\" alt=\"Great Spotted Cuckoo Clamator glandarius\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>Great Spotted Cuckoo. Great bird, lousy photo.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The 50km Hotring seemed determined to keep in on the act, with the first\u00a0Night Heron, Purple Heron,\u00a0<strong>Osprey<\/strong> and\u00a0Little Ringed Plover.\u00a0<strong>Lesser Short-toed Lark<\/strong> was another species seen in the Hotring but unlikely to occur in the Hotspot. Oh well.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/osprey.jpg\" alt=\"Osprey Pandion haliaetus\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>Fish-eating Osprey. Not Osprey-eating fish. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>And on the note of species unlikely to occur in the Hotspot the prize went to a <strong>Great Bustard<\/strong> which came to meet me\u00a0near <strong>Utxesa <\/strong>on the 17th March. One of the very few records of this marvellous species for <strong>Catalunya<\/strong> in the last few decades. What a shame it didn&#8217;t come with some friends to settle down and raise a family.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/montroig.jpg\" alt=\"Mont-roig through the window.\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><em>Mont-roig through the window (fortunately not mine)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>March has come and gone again and so I&#8217;d better get in this 3rd Hotspot report before the guiding season comes into full swing and keeps me away from my beloved keyboard. This March of 2009 there were days when spring was in the air; sometimes one could even feel the scorch of a summer [&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-320","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\/p7I752-5a","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","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=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}