Flooding and plowing of rice paddies brings thousands of gulls to l’Albufera. Despite the intense winds, we connect with several common gulls, Caspian gulls, herring gull, little gull plus bonus ring-necked ducks.
Our only city visited in India provided hornbills and hundreds of kites. Nearby Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary hosts pelicans, eagles, herons and ibises. Mysore blends culture and vibrant city life with some great birding.
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 friends meeting in l’Albufera in the onset of winter resulted in good numbers of ducks and waders. Short-eared owl, black storks, several goldcrests and a cracking sociable lapwing were highlights of the day.
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.
The enigmatic Dupont’s lark is extremely range-restricted in our region. Some friends and I try tracking them down at their habitat, and end up having a fantastic migration day with 13 raptor species seen.
The bearded reedling is an uncommon inhabitant of reedbeds in south Alicante wetlands. Skulky and skittish, we eventually enjoyed some views of a couple of this stunning species in El Hondo.
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.
Two days birding l’Albufera finished with terrific sunsets. Highlights included a mega greater yellowlegs, wintering jack snipes, a common scoter, the local sacred ibis, and numerous waders and waterfowl.
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.
September brought the opportunity to look for long-awaited species: dotterel and northern bald ibis. Bee-eaters, wheatears, flycatchers, honey buzzards, and whinchats showed up everywhere.
Amidst an avian botulism outbreak, several birds are released after recovering in the local wildlife rescue center. These include the common pochard and ferruginous duck, both locally and globally threatened.
