Some months ago, I happened to be reading an article about
Cardiff Airport in Wales Online and one of the reader comments mentioned how
poor Cardiff was in flights compared to Bristol Airport. This was news to me,
having left the UK before the explosion of low-cost airlines. I immediately
checked into the situation and found that there were flights to many cities in
Europe from Bristol and that these were typically a bit cheaper than flying
from Heathrow. In fact, if you were prepared to fly with no change of clothes,
as my birding friend Chris Lamsdell amusingly put it, the flights were much
cheaper.
I decided to take advantage of this during future trips to
see my relatives in Bristol and hatched a plan for a late winter trip to Spain
to catch up with the three species I had tried for and missed the previous
year, as well as add various woodpeckers, Lammergeier and Wallcreeper. I allowed
for nine full days because of potential issues finding the woodpeckers and, of
course, Dupont’s Lark.
I flew into Barcelona. My original plan was to try for
Wallcreeper the first morning and then drive all the way to Pamplona for an
afternoon shot at the woodpeckers. I spent the first night in Lleida, which was
close to a Wallcreeper site. Despite a late arrival there, I decided to check
the forecast and discovered that I had three days of good weather before a set
of rainstorms came in. Flashbacks to my first ever foreign trip back in the
early 1980s to the French Pyrenees immediately occurred. On that trip, despite
it being July, we arrived in the Pyrenees and suffered two days of non-stop
rain. In fact, we had given up and just started to pack the tent contents when
a patch of blue sky appeared along with a Griffon Vulture. We decided to stay
and enjoyed a couple of days of great birding.
I became concerned that Lammergeier might be impossible to
see once the rain set in and so considered trying for it after looking for
Wallcreeper. The morning Wallcreeper hunt consumed three hours and was mostly a
bust aside from a bunch of Griffon Vultures, some Crag Martins and a pair of
Bonelli’s Eagles. The area I had planned to look for Lammergeier (Bearded
Vulture for my America audience) was too long a round trip for me to do that
and to comfortably get to Pamplona that night. However, during the trip
research, I had noted that the species was regularly seen at the Sierra de la
Guara. The site there was only about an hour and twenty-minute round trip detour
from my route so I decided to try that, as well as have a second bite at
Wallcreeper at Riglos. The woodpeckers would now wait until the next day.
As I ascended the road up the Sierra de la Guara, I picked
out more Griffons and then had good looks at a Short-toed Eagle. Arriving at
the pass, more than 20 Griffons were in view in a single scan, with some very
close. It didn’t take too long for my first look at a Lammergeier, but I soon
discovered that this species was tending to glide along the ridges and was not
very inclined to circle higher above my head like the Griffons. I had several
reasonable views but the birds were quickly gliding away almost as soon as I
got on to them. I decided to walk a track running alongside one of the ridges.
This paid off quickly as I had a subadult Lammergeier come into view quite low
over the ridge. It even circled a couple of times to give me even better looks.
Further exploration along the track yielded two Lammergeiers in flight at once.
At this point, I felt I was unlikely to see one better and
moved on to Riglos. Given my late afternoon arrival, I wasn’t that surprised to
find no sign of any Wallcreepers, but at least I was able to familiarize myself
with the site. Birds included a Peregrine and the ubiquitous Griffons, Crag
Martins and a Red Kite.
The next morning, I left my hotel in Pamplona pre-dawn to
drive up to a good area for woodpeckers. Upon arrival at the site, I discovered
that I didn’t have any playback capability for the target species and that I
had no internet access up there! After a futile hour and a half during which I
failed to see or hear a single woodpecker, I drove back down towards Pamplona
to get some reception and download vocalizations and drumming.
Since the connections were slow, it took some time for the downloads.
While doing these, I decided to try a different location – Bertizko Jaurerriko
Parke Naturala – which allegedly had all of Spain’s breeding woodpeckers. I
arrived there around 10 AM and birding was more lively with Firecrest and
Goldcrest quickly seen along with a flock of Red-billed Leiothrix, which are widely
established in the Pyrenees now. Interestingly, I initially identified the leiothrix
by call from having just heard them in Hawaii, where they are also introduced!
Some initial Middle Spotted Woodpecker playback quickly stirred up a drumming
Great Spotted. A little further on, I heard a call that sounded similar to the
Middle Spotted Woodpecker playback I had been using and sure enough, it was one
– a nice male that showed reasonably well. I then proceeded further up the
stream valley but other than the odd Iberian Green or Great Spotted Woodpecker,
I had no sight or sound of their rarer cousins. I did get to add Dipper and
Marsh Tit to my Spain list.
After a couple of hours of this futility, I decided to head
back to the first site I had checked in the morning. The most direct route was
via some back roads that took me quite high into the foothills. An initial stop
turned up a nice male Cirl Bunting and I eventually hit some nice mature beech
woods that looked pretty good for White-backed Woodpecker. At my second stop in
these, I heard a Black Woodpecker calling in flight some distance away.
Cranking up some playback eventually resulted in a fly-by view and then a
decent look at one perched on a trunk for some time. It turned out that there
were two birds. It was interesting to see how far some of the woodpeckers would
overfly the playback, seemingly by a couple of hundred yards at times. Whether
that is just how they behave or because I was playing at too high a volume and
confusing them is currently unclear to me.
I got back to the original site and had very little luck
with any woodpeckers, despite some temporary excitement at hearing a
White-backed Woodpecker drumming close-by, which turned out to be my phone
going off in my pocket! I decided to drive a little further up since there was
a lot of rushing water noise at the e-bird hotspot location and found there
were tracks into some really nice beech forest. Although, I had no success
along one of the tracks, upon returning to the car, I ran into a Spanish bird
photographer who confirmed that the woodpeckers were generally seen along these
tracks, especially on the one along the other side of the road, which I had yet
to try. A walk out along this second track did result in some drumming that
sounded quite similar to a White-backed. However, I could not get a visual and
gave up as the light deteriorated.
Once I got back from the mountains, I checked the weather
forecast. I was delighted to see the wind and rain were not arriving until
Thursday afternoon. That meant I could still spend all of Wednesday if needed
trying for the White-backed Woodpecker before heading on to overnight near
Riglos for another attempt at Wallcreeper on Thursday morning.
Shortly after dawn, I was back up above Zubiri. I drove a
little bit higher to start with. A check of some nice beech forest yielded
another distant drumming woodpecker. Although it sounded wrong, I lugged up the
slope merely to confirm it was just an Iberian Green Woodpecker. I was also
trying to find a Eurasian Treecreeper, which are regular here, but only came up
with Short-toed, which is the commoner of two even at this altitude. I then
went back up the track where I had heard the drumming woodpecker the previous
late afternoon. I got a response in the same area and walked round to get
closer. At that point, I heard a distant Black Woodpecker call and began to
wonder if it might have been source of the drumming. Fortunately, the next
burst of playback brought the bird into view – a male White-backed Woodpecker,
which proceeded to show well. In fact, I was able to show it to a couple of
very happy Spanish birders who were walking down the track. Interestingly, I
could never get any Black Woodpeckers to respond to the playback but the
White-backed came back in to check out the Black Woodpecker drumming.
It was now late morning and an over two-hour drive to the
Riglos area. I decided to take a longer route and check out a number of
wetlands. I was hoping to see some large crane flocks as well as bolster my
chances of hitting a minor goal of the trip, which was to reach 250 species in
Spain. It transpired that there were many birds I had wrongly assumed I had already
seen in Spain, such as Chiffchaff and Song Thrush, so I easily blew by this
goal that day. I hit up three wetland areas. The first was pretty limited but a
good spot for Tufted Duck, which I then naturally saw at the next wetland
after this at well – the Laguna de Pitillas. This location was quite good with
decent numbers of ducks – Mallard, Gadwall, Teal and Shoveler – along with nine
Graylag Geese and plenty of Mute Swans. The inevitable Marsh Harriers and Red
Kites were complemented by a male Hen Harrier, while Reed Bunting and Meadow
Pipit were further Spain ticks, both of which I saw subsequently multiple
times.
I finished up at the Laguna de Dos Reinos. Wildfowl numbers
were much smaller here, although the lake also had a few flamingos and an
Avocet. Bearded Tits were pinging away on-and-off in front of the hide, but I
couldn’t ever see one, an effort made a lot more difficult by all the
Chiffchaffs popping in and out from the reeds. A bit more on-line sleuthing
showed that many of the birds actually hung out in rice fields in the area, so
I jumped back into the car and drove around a bit. I located a couple of fields
with some birds, but not the great variety that had been reported a few days
previously. I did have a nice fly-by of a flock of 95 Common Cranes. I went
back to the laguna in the hope they would drop in there to roost, but they did
not, at least not before I left. A male Merlin was a good addition to my
Spanish raptor list and at least seven Marsh Harriers came into roost.
I eventually reached my hotel in a small sleepy town and
woke up the next morning ready for another Wallcreeper effort. I reached Riglos
by 8.00 AM and proceeded to follow the small tracks up to the base of the
cliffs. I quickly found an obliging Alpine Accentor and then saw a Blue Rock
Thrush – both regular species here that I had missed on my first visit. I
decided to follow the base of cliffs along to the east this time, which
required more of a steep scramble than I like these days. I finally reached the
eastmost spot I could access. After proving ineffective previously, this time
the playback resulted in a suspicious-looking bird popping around the corner. A
bit more playback brought not one but two Wallcreepers back around the corner
and they appeared to be having a bit of territorial dispute. Eventually one of
the birds left and I was able to coax the other bird down even closer for
really great looks. I found I had accidentally hit some button on my camera
that resulted in a weird shooting mode and I now could not work out how to get
out of. As a result, my pictures do not do justice to the great looks.
Looking at the forecast, I had enough time to get to the
Belchite area for a quick lunchtime try for Dupont’s Lark before the rain hit.
I spent about 50 minutes looking but didn’t see or hear one at all – hardly a
shock, given how difficult this species can be. At that point, the rain
arrived. I had already worked out that the best strategy was to drive straight
down to the coast since the weather there would be a bit better for the next
two days than around Belchite, where it would raining heavily the next day,
followed by winds, which make Dupont’s really hard to see.
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