Spain - pre-Pyrenees

When we were planning this trip we didn't realise that we were close enough to the mountains to get there easily.

Having done so Internet searching I found a site guide by a guy called Steve West (birdinginSpain.com) who I contacted to see if her could take us up into the mountains for a day. A wise choice as he was excellent and I would thoroughly recommend him if you're this way.

Steve met us early outside the hotel and we headed north towards the foothills of the Pyrenees. First on the agenda was a small village church that had been visited recently by a wallcreeper but we drew a blank. Nice narrow streets to explore though.

A short drive further north to check some riverside gorges but still no luck. Did manage nice views of crag martin and black bellied dipper though.

We headed higher still towards one of the raptor feeding stations that have been set up to help boost the vulture populations thoughout the region in the hope of seeing lammergeier.
The drive up was pretty productive adding providing my 2nd lifer (citril finch) of the trip, singing woodlarks,  Dartford warbler, firecrest, crossbill and several crested tits.

As soon as we reached the top of the hill there were already good numbers of griffon vultures in the air and it wasn't long before the first lammergeier came into view. It was soon joined by another 2 juvs with another 3 distant birds over a far ridge. At one stage we has black & griffon vultures, lammergeier and golden eagle (1 of 5 we saw) in the same binocular view!
It got better as we picked a sub adult bird over the ridge that came really close overhead. Through the scope to could see the orangy underparts and even seen the 'beard' drooping either side of the bill. Awesome bird and the 2nd lifer of the day.

We spent a bit of time looking for alpine chough and alpine accentor before lunch but it seemed that they had already moved to higher altitude with the mild weather. It was good to see decent flock of mixed finches including some cracking cirl bunting and a small group of rock sparrows.

The afternoon was spent hunting for accentors. At one stop I asked Steve if he was looking for wallcreeper. His response was 'I don't think we will see one here' As he finished the sentence, I picked up a wallcreeper on the rockface!!! Although I had seen one on India, this one was actually on a wall and showed brilliantly. Flicking its wings and it moved about the cliffs feeding on spiders.

Our final road of the day didn't produce any accentors either but we did add our 4th vulture species of the day in the form of 4 Egyptian at a small rubbish dump.

A superb day birding made all the better with the local knowledge from Steve giving us an impressive total of...

Lammergeier - 16
Black vulture - 8
Egyptian vulture - 4
Griffon vulture - 200+
Golden eagle - 5
Peregrine - 3
Kestrel
Sparrowhawk
Buzzard
Black kite - 1
Red kite - 10
Wallcreeper - 1
Red billed chough - 100+

Spain - settling in

Rather that stay at home, we decided to use up the last of my leave on a short break to NE Spain with the hope of seeing a few bustards and larks.

After a 90min flight this morning we were heading west of Barcelona to the plains around the town of Lleida.

Birding started as soon as we got into our room over the adjacent wasteground from the window. Black redstart, serin, crested lark, tree sparrow, blackcap and cirl bunting all seen before unpacking the scope.

We decided to spend the afternoon looking around the fields south of the town for sandgrouse and larks.

Several corn buntings were feeding around a small pool when I had my first tick of the trip, 4 calandra larks flying over.
Good numbers of raptors were in the area and it was nice to compare black and red kites sparring together. At least 2 marsh harriers and a smart male hen harrier were also present.

The highlight of the afternoon were the calandra larks. Once we had moved out of the arable fields they were everywhere. Most of the views were in flight as they displayed but we did see several really well on the tracks. The song reminded me a bit of corn bunting.

We continued to tour the tracks for sandgrouse. Didn't get any  although a couple of hoopoe were a bonus. We did find a couple of pools that we will visit early doors to see if they use them.

Probably the strangest sighting of the day were 9 red - billed chough! A species that we normally associate with rugged coastline looked so out of place feeding in the dry arable fields!

A good start to the trip.

Recent Ringing

When the weather turned cold last weekend I was full of excitement for a good ringing session. There had been loads of birds about but the strong winds had prevented any chance of opening any nets.

How wrong could I have been!
Yes we did catch a few things but the birds had largely deserted the area. Two days earlier there had been 10 blackbirds about, Saturday we only caught a couple. Even the house sparrows out the front of the house had disappeared.

Having said all that, we did manage to catch a few nice things.
First up was a lovely male siskin, the first one of the year and only the 2nd of the winter followed by a 1st year male lesser redpoll soon after. I popped on a tape with a redpoll call and managed to catch a 2nd male. Neither bird had been around before so it was a surprise to catch them.

Our piebald blackbird was still about but we didn't catch her this time.

1-3 - lesser redpoll
4 - siskin
5 - female blackbird

Winter WeBS

Thankfully the weather was dry and bring for out monthly count of all the wildfowl and waders on the reserve today after the crappy conditions of recent days but despite it being much colder, there was no visible increase in bird numbers

Water levels have been low for a week or so now which has been loved by the teal feeding around the edges of the lagoons but today they were obvious by their absence. The fresh marsh was packed with large gulls probably as a result of the strong winds attracting them in to the razorshell and starfish wreck on the beach. 3 yellow-legged gulls were about but from my position, all the birds were back on to me making them hard to go through. My full count produced 822 herring, 2 LBB, 150 common but sadly none of the yellow-legged.
A barn owl carrying food from Patsy's reedbed to their usual nest site was interesting record this early in the year.

I finished my count and headed around to the west bank to join up with Dave and Chris foe a look at the sea. The tide was still a bit too high making viewing birds in the swell very difficult. There were small numbers of mergs, scoter and goldeneye but looking for anything else amongst them was pointless. Two small groups of eider and a couple of immature gannet were added to my yearlist.
I decided to leave Dave and Chris and walk down the beach towards Brancaster to check through the gulls and look for a small flock of finches I had seen earlier in the day. A nice adult med gull was in the flock but no white wingers I had hoped for. I did pick up a couple of colour ringed herring gulls but they were flushed by a group of muppets before I could see them properly!

After lunch I spent most of the afternoon watching the fresh marsh. There seemed to be mlre teal than in the morning and I spent a bit of time counting and checking through the birds. 20 avocet (1 colour-ringed), 58 pintail, 452 brent geese, 77 blackwits, 48 dunlin, 73 mallard and a water rail feeding on the reed edge near Island Hide.
Despite the tide now being out, another look at the sea didn't produce a great deal apart from a big increase in common gulls (2500) now the shells and starfish were exposed and a close in guillemot (yeartick) flying past.

A first good full day out on the patch takes my yearlist over the 100 mark with 103 species recorded so far.

Beautiful light

After a few days of dark wet days, yesterday turned out to be a stunner. Yes is was cold but it is winter!

Had the afternoon off work so I decided to go for a bit of a route march up to Thornham Point for some exercise. Didn't really look for birds but there were good numbers of wildfowl on the fresh marsh.

The strong NW wind on the beach made it a good walk to the point if a little cold. Out of the wind, it was surprising how warm the sun was.

Lovely light for photography

Faithless 2.0

What was definitely the highlight  of the year for me was seeing Faithless in Manchester at the beginning of December.

It was loud, all the classics tunes were performed and the lightshow was spectacular.

Being seated lasted all of 5mins before everyone was up of their feet dancing.

Despite being slightly deaf the next day it was an awesome night

I'll be back

The blog will be returning in the New Year with my tales of woe from my yearlist attempt for Titchwell in 2016.