Just back from an excellent trip to Northern Spain. Here's the report. It's lengthy, so I've split it into episodes. I hope it's of some use to anyone thinking of visiting the area, so I've included a bit of detaill on some of the locations visited that doesn't appear in the books.
Here goes for Part 1
Catalonia & Aragon Trip
28 April to 12 May 2007
Based at Mora
Our second trip of the year and our third birding visit to this region. We’ve gone there at this time for the past two years before this trip and the area still has plenty to offer. It’s a world away from the clutter and golf-courses of Southern Spain.
Easyjet again from Newcastle at 10.10 on Saturday 28th April. This is a more civilised time for a take-off than our 6.30 flight to Malaga in February and I even got some sleep the night before. The downside is that it would be late afternoon before we arrived at our destination, Mora on the River Ebro – a town perhaps better known to British visitors for its excellent fishing for large wild carp and the huge European catfish. My first trip here for a week and a half in spring 2005 gave me 150 species and a love for the area. We came back in 2006 for two weeks and 174 species, building on earlier experience, so I was hoping for a similar total this time, with a few lifers sadly missed on earlier trips perhaps added in for good measure.
Car hire was pre-booked and paid for with the flights through Easyjet and came to around £194 for the two week’s hire of a diesel Fiat Punto (Barcelona is one of the dearer airports); just the right size for the narrow Spanish roads. For a major airport the car-hire collection at Barcelona is abysmal. The Europcar desk is under-sized and even though there were only about 10 customers in the queue before me it took 45 minutes to get away from the desk with my key. This is normal for this airport. The car was immaculate with only 2700km on the clock, although it went back with a considerably higher mileage when I returned it.
Our base was a small apartment with good facilities in Mora, a double town which straddles the Ebro about 30 miles upstream from the delta and 20 miles from the coast. It’s not at all touristy, (the “real” Spain as those awful travel programmes say – ugh!) but there are a number of apartments etc available because of its popularity with anglers. I chose it because it was handy for the Ebro Delta and also some steppe sites to the north. At two and a half hours to the closest part of the Pyrenees, the mountains are just about reachable. Other bases may be more suitable for the latter, but I’ve grown to like it.
Even though we were quickly off the plane and our bags were some of the first that came off the conveyor the delay in collecting the car meant that it was 3pm before we left the airport. The late start for the 90 mile drive with a promise of a visit to a supermarket at the end of it made me change my mind about popping into El Prat de Llobregat for a quick look as we left the airport. This in hindsight was a mistake. A cream-coloured courser was seen on the beach 3 days earlier and photographed the day after that, but I didn’t know about this until we got back to the UK. Ho, hum.
Day 1, Saturday 28th April 2007.
Weather , Fine, mainly clear skies, 24C.
Barcelona airport to Mora d’Ebre.
A 90 mile drive, mainly on motorway gave little opportunity for sightings beyond the common stuff such as sparrows, pigeons, spotless starlings and swifts, but we did spot our first Woodchat Shrike of the trip sitting on roadside wires. Our arrival at the apartment just after 5pm with our shopping from the supermarket saw Yellow-legged Gull, Black Kite, White Wagtail, Bee Eater, Little Egret and various swallows, martins and some mallard added to the list. We settled into the apartment and had a relaxed meal of Pinxos, spuds and veg with a bottle of Rioja to shake off the trip. Dusk saw us down by the riverside for an aerial display from a Red-necked Nightjar, joined by Scops Owl, followed by a return to the apartment, a bottle of Sangre de Toro and a couple of Bacardis before a well-earned night’s sleep.
Total for the trip – 24 species so far.
Day 2. Sunday 29th April 2007.
Weather. Dull and damp am, 15 deg. Fine later, cool for the time of year at 20 deg.
Ebro Delta
A quick look at the river before we left Mora gave us our first Cattle Egret, sitting sullenly in the rain and mist in a tamarisk bush in the river, which was in flood following one of the wettest springs for many years.
Ignoring the most obvious route to the delta I chose the quicker one, down the road to Rasquera before cutting across to the N340 at El Perello and getting onto the delta just past L’Ampolla, so avoiding the town centre and going straight to the Laguna de les Olles on the southern side of the town. A short visit to the tower hide gave us Zitting Cisticola, Black-headed Gull, Black Winged Stilt, Marsh Harrier, Whiskered Tern, Purple Heron, a fly-past of seven Night Heron, Red-crested Pochard, Coot, Cormorant, Little Tern and finally a Caspian Tern which flew across the lagoon directly towards us.
Driving from here to Deltebre and on to our next stop at Canal Vell, I was struck at how dry the area was. By now the rice fields usually have all been flooded and are covered with thousands of feeding terns. On this visit every field was bone-dry and many were still being worked to a tilth by tractors. The tern species were present, but the numbers were only a fraction of what they would normally be at the end of April. The drive gave us Gull-billed Tern, two Lesser Kestrels, Greenshank, Common Sandpiper and Squacco Heron.
Canal Vell held its normal complement of coots and Greater Flamingo along with Black Redstart, Audouin’s Gull, Wood Sandpiper, Purple Gallinule, Great Crested Grebe, four Great White Egrets, Great Reed Warbler, Tree Sparrow, Dabchick, Spotted Redshank, Slender-billed Gull, Glossy Ibis, Black Tern and a group of 8 or 9 night herons that were loafing about on the small island in front of the tower.
El Garxal on the north side of the river mouth as usual held a good stock of birds, including greater flamingos, purple gallinules, egrets, herons, ducks and waders. Among the hundreds of coots one stood out by virtue of the white plastic collar band that it wore, indicative of a Crested Coot from one of the release schemes in various parts of Spain (but not, curiously, the Ebro Delta). This could well be the bird that I spotted at the same time last year on Canal Vell. Other new birds for the list included Gadwall, Crested Lark, Hoopoe and Willow Warbler.
Breaking with my habit of only doing one side of the delta in a day we headed off to the south side. This was made easier by the absence of avian distraction on the dry rice-fields and I was keen to visit the hide at Riet Vell at Eucaliptus, where a pair of little crakes had been reported putting on award-winning performances in the open for the crowds throughout most of April. We added a Mediterranean Gull to the list on our way.
Riet Vell was impressive. I’d previously had no idea it was there, but I’d passed by the entrance without noticing it many times. I know better now.
We spent the rest of the day in the excellent hide eagerly awaiting the appearance of the little crakes, but to no avail. The record book in the hide had its latest entry 6 days before on St George’s day (a big day in Catalonia) and one of them had showed then. No news is good news, so I waited on in the hope that the absence of recent records was because of the absence of observers rather than the absence of crakes. The dry rice field behind the hide held about a dozen Collared Pratincoles, well camouflaged against the dry earth. The field on the other side of the path contained over two dozen purple gallinules. The lake was alive with life. A terrapin about the size of a dinner plate loafed on a log and didn’t budge even when a moorhen walked up the log with the sole intention of annoying it by pecking at its tail and left hind leg. A Redstart hopped around the hide. Egrets, herons and glossy ibis stalked the water. A small group of flamingos fed over to the left, where whiskered and black terns fed over the water. Mallard, gadwall, red-crested pochards and dabchick fed in front of the hide where a wood sandpiper dropped in to allow us to admire its spangled back at close range. The occasional fly-over by a marsh harrier kept the pool’s birds on their toes. The walk back to the car after a crake-less two or three hours added Spotted Flycatcher and Pied Flycatcher to the list.
Back at Mora the raptor count was increased by two Common Buzzard.
Total species so far – 66.