Birding Extremadura

I was away in the UK for a week to attend the amazing British Birdwatching Fair at Rutland last weekend and stay on a few days so see my parents in Norfolk. It was two evenings when I got back home, finding Extremadura as hot and as dry as I had left it. Such high temperatures so late in the summer are unusual. This morning I headed again to the rice fields to see how the wader passage was doing. Getting the best of the morning always requires a flexible strategy, because fields that were muddy and damp on my last visit, may be overgrown this time and much less good for birds, whereas unproductive areas previously may spring surprises. So it was this time, with fields which had been thronging with birds a month ago, now hardly worth more than a few minutes checking. The best area was the large pool, surrounded by an embankment. There was very little water, but the flashes that were there had a quite a good selection of waders: a couple of Temminck’s Stints, some Little Stint, Dunlin, W...

Here we feel that autumn has arrived by the middle of August. It is still hot and sunny (maximum temperatures here will probably be in the thirties every day for next week or so), but the nights are lengthening and there is a freshness at dawn. Providing most evidence for the change in season are the birds. Last month in a blog I described the start of the autumn wader passage. On a my most recent visit to the rice fields nearby, there were small numbers of Little Stint now featuring amongst the Wood Sandpipers and Ruff, as well as a party of very early Common Snipe. Bright yellow juvenile Willow Warblers were foraging in the bushes, along with Sedge Warblers: both passage species here. But the autumn passage is also visible much close to home. Because of the drought this year, the garden (watered from our own bore-hole) has become a little green, moist oasis. Almost exactly a year to the date of making a first-ever appearance on the garden-list, a Western Bonelli’s Warbler has again b...

I spent yesterday evening doing bits of business in Trujillo, and finishing at 9pm headed to snatch the last hour of daylight out on the plains of Belén, just twenty minutes from home. One first has to navigate the little village of Belén itself, where the tiny streets twist and bifurcate, like in so many Spanish villages where a moment's lapse in concentration will lead to a wrong turning down a thoroughfare that will narrow right down to a cul-de-sac. Many of these villages appear deserted during the day: the shutters are down and not a soul is visible. They come to life in the evening. Chairs are brought out and the adults sit on the edge of the street (in Belén there is no pavement so this makes the streets even narrower for passing traffic). The children play and where there are benches, at street corners, groups of older men or women (rarely mixed) will sit and gossip. One notices that all the older men and women are more or less the same size and shape: stockier and shorter...

Birdingextremadura blog by Martin Kelsey The hot settled weather continues and in parts of Spain the extremely dry conditions have created a tinderbox. Big fires have been raging in eastern Spain and here in Extremadura there have been serious wildfires in the woodlands of the Hurdes, in the north-east. Yesterday a pall of smoke was discernable in the sky and a faint smell of smoke. It probably came from fires about 60 or 70 kilometres away. It has been an extremely dry year. The spring rains all but failed. The dry vegetation is significantly lower than last year. Very dry springs and summers here can have an impact on the birds. Little Bustard, for example, have very poor breeding seasons in dry springs. A friend of mine has over 30 White Stork nests on a ruin on his property. This year, for the first time ever, many pairs seemingly abandoned their young, about two weeks before they were ready to leave the nest. Some perished on the nests, whilst other youngsters flew to the ground, ...

Welcome to my blog and share with me, through the seasons, encounters with nature in Extremadura, as well as life and culture in this very special part of Wild Spain. Mid-July is traditionally seen as the quietest time of the year for birders in this part of Spain. For those with families we are already well into the school holidays and activities tend to revolve around activities with the children. It is often the hottest time of the year, so the time to get out into the field is first thing in the morning or well into the evening. Yesterday I did just that, making a dawn visit to one of my favourite areas: an area of rice fields, beside open plains and dehesa (the famous grazing woodland) about twenty-five minutes to the south of our house. I try to visit the area as often as I can, which usually means not as often as I would like. It never disappoints, there will always be something of interest there. As I approached the area, in the dusk of first light, a Black-winged Kite sat on a...