![\"Birding](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/birdingmontsonis1.jpg\")
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Birding together near Lleida<\/em><\/p>\n Martin’s main targets for our second day of birding together were to\u00a0get a good look\u00a0at Orphean<\/strong> and Subalpine Warblers<\/strong> in the morning and then\u00a0Pin-tailed Sandgrouse<\/strong> on the plains in the afternoon. It wasn’t an easy task, given the weather conditions and the time of the year. However, we managed to do it all, even the Pin-tailed Sandgrouse in the scorching\u00a0afternoon heat of 36\u00baC (Fahrenheit anybody?).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0We took a couple of short walks in the lovely Sierra de Guara<\/strong>. Fruit of our efforts was a generous dose of fine scenery – impressive rock faces, ancient olive groves, near abandoned solitary villages, breathtaking gorges<\/strong>. The birds were in no short supply either, and we encountered numerous Egyptian Vultures, Griffon Vultures, a pair of Peregrines, both light and dark morph Booted Eagles<\/strong>, a Short-toed Eagle, Rock Sparrows, Alpine Swifts, Cirl Buntings, Wrynecks<\/strong>, etc. Then the Warblers, with no fewer than 5 Sylvia warbler species<\/strong> (Orphean, Subalpine, Sardinian, Dartford Warbler and Blackcap) as well as Bonelli’s Warbler<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Alquezar in the Sierra de Guara<\/em><\/p>\n We had a relaxed lunch on a verandah overlooking the walled town of Alquezar<\/strong> before rather ambitiously setting off to the plains to coincide with the warmest – no, hottest -part of the day. But birders do things like that when there is a bird at stake. And Martin was keen enough to want to have a shot at the grouse, and his wife Carol was resigned to the discomfort that accompanying her husband often involved.<\/em><\/p>\n C’est la vie<\/em>, especially the birding vie<\/em>, I said as we crossed the last few metres back to the car parked on the edge of a dry dusty and stony field. The next stop was to\u00a0be a petrol station and then the dropoff at their Lleida hotel<\/strong>. We had followed the dustiest route across the plains and had stopped in all the right places to scan, but the Pin-tailed Sandgrouse<\/strong> had eluded us.<\/p>\n Well, I thought we were rather optimistic looking for this inconspicuous species at the time of day when it is most inactive, <\/em>Martin pronounced.<\/p>\n Just then a female Pin-tailed Sandgrouse launched itself into the air from under our feet, and emitted an accusing “gahGAH!”.<\/p>\n Pin-tailed Sandgrouse nest with 3 eggs<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Birding together near Lleida Martin’s main targets for our second day of birding together were to\u00a0get a good look\u00a0at Orphean and Subalpine Warblers in the morning and then\u00a0Pin-tailed Sandgrouse on the plains in the afternoon. It wasn’t an easy task, given the weather conditions and the time of the year. However, we managed to do […]<\/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":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding-and-wildlife-trips","category-birds-in-spain"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7I752-5N","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","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=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Alquezar](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/alquezar.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Pin-tailed](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/ptsgrousenest20june.jpg\")
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