A full day in Qatar with a rental car was the perfect scenario to look for the hypocolius, a mythical Persian Gulf wintering specialty. Namaqua doves, wheatears, desert warblers, sparrow-larks and more awaited.

Ría de Santoña in New Year’s provides cracking winter specialties: brant geese, horned grebes, loons and waders. Mega red-breasted geese and redpolls are bonus additions to an awesome short trip.

A recent visit to the coastal lagoon of Merja Zerga, a stopover of the East Atlantic Flyway and home to slender-billed curlews before their extinction, yielded some of the critically endangered and WP’s last marsh owls.

A fantastic weekend in Delta de l’Ebre with friends resulted in many bonus species including mega white-tailed lapwing, pectoral sandpipers, buff-breasted sandpipers, Pacific golden plover or western reef heron.

A Cape gull from Southern Africa and a laughing gull from the Americas have shown up in Northern Spain. We enjoyed awesome birding while twitching these stunners on a roadtrip.

Summer season is the prime time for waders in south Alicante, with marsh sandpipers, godwits and curlew sandpipers in El Hondo and black tern, pratincoles and regular rarities as elegant terns in El Pinet.

A quick stopover in Kuwait provided WP specialties using public transport: white-tailed and spur-winged lapwings, isabelline and masked shrikes, white-throated kingfisher, clamorous reed warbler and more.

A morning visit to Lake Kerkini looking for lesser white-fronted geese and tundra swans resulted in three Greek rarities: a Siberian chiffchaff, three little bustards, and an Oriental turtle dove.

An intense full day watching birds in Alicante delivers a great final count for our party of three. Different migrant birds seen include four different Eurasian hobbies, definitely the top species of the day.