Birding Extremadura

A winter's evening at Arrocampo Reservoir (Martin Kelsey) At a quarter to six the action starts, flagged by the arrival of a band of forty Cattle Egrets, pushed by a sense of purpose and giving their craggy calls as they pass. A guttural wrenching call incongrously emergences from the elegance of a Little Egret. Why is it that a family of birds so suave that demand for their nuptual plumes decimated their populations over a hundred years ago, are the authors of such coarse squawks? My musing is quickly overtaken by the next ribbon of dusk activity as I count over two hundred Jackdaws, lining-up and all facing the same direction along high-tension cables. These are suspended from pylons that cut a tangent along the eastern fringe of the Arrocampo Reservoir. Unlike other reservoirs, the water level of Arrocampo barely fluctuates during the year. It acts as the source of coolant water for the Almaráz nuclear power plant, the white domes of which I can see across to my left. Th...

Our Judas Tree in flower (Claudia Kelsey) Standing on the eastern side of our drive, with the house as a backdrop, the Judas Tree Cercis siliquastrum bestowed a breathtaking performance each spring. From its bare and twisted twigs buds erupted into candyfloss-pink pea-like flowers. The blossoming tree drew admiration and from afar became a beacon, networking as it were, with other Judas Trees that had been planted beside the old houses, that like ours, had been small wineries ( Lagares ) on the hill which became thus named, the Sierra de los Lagares. For the ten-days or so of the flowering period, this visual spectacle was also audible. Standing close to tree, with my eyes shut, I would be wholly enveloped by the warmth of the sound of thousands of honey bees and carpenter bees, feeding well into the spring evening on the nectar it gifted them. It was like an embrace of sheer life and vitality. As the flowers dropped and carpeted the ground below the tree, forming rosy drifts o...

Autumnn  Buttercup (Martin Kelsey) This wet and stormy autumn has brought waves of change, dramatic in a way never matched by the unwrapping of spring. Our rewards for leaden skies, racing clouds and rain a-plenty have been a succession of simple, pleasing markers.  By mid-October the landscape transformed from beaten and scorched aridity to an almost Celtic green. Late October gave us the white blankets of autumn bulbs in flower: Serotine Narcissus and Autumn Snowflakes. Into November, rocky valley-sides became dusted yellow: a profusion of Autumn Buttercups ( Ranunculus bullatus ). We pass through abrupt episodes of colour, a race through a second spring, with successive bands of single hues. And so with the arrival of birds: October witnessed surge in the flow of Common Cranes coming into Extremadura, with concentrations feeding in the damp stubble fields of maize and rice, providing spectacles which have well exceeded those in the last two years, when we suffered aut...

River Magasca early November (Martin Kelsey) The months of October and November are the most critical in shaping the seasons ahead. After the slumbering stasis of summer, it is autumn when both figuratively and in a real sense, the flood gates open. Or should - because if the rain does not materialise, the forthcoming winter will be filled with a grey despondency, across both the landscape and eating and gnawing into the very psyche of the rural folk. This autumn people are walking with a spring in their step. So far this season we have had already had over four times as much rain as last autumn, with plenty more expected over the next few days. This figure is based on the daily rainfall measurements taken by my good neighbour, Peter. He tells me that so far this year we have received 635 mm of rain (which is higher than the average rainfall for London, UK). The result has been a feast to the eyes that could not have contrasted more with the bleakness of last year. Rivers that w...

Dotterel (Martin Kelsey) Relicts of late spring, the bristling ranks of taut, brittle thistle heads stand proud over the crisp, withered grasses. Ashen-coloured tumbleweeds of wild brassicas roll on the side of the track. Save the improbably tall and spindly flowering spikes of Sea Squill which fleck the terrain, the plains are a landscape at rest. It is an open stage, apparently empty, under an intense ocean-blue sky which carries an autumnal freshness. Cooler nights have driven the haze of summer away and the parched landscape now looks burnished russet, almost apricot gold, instead of the grey blond of August. The sweet melodic song of a Thekla Lark gently dominates, the rather stocky-looking bird slowing circling high above us. We are distracted only by the bubbling purr of Black-bellied Sandgrouse. Four swing in front of us, in direct low flight, barrel-bodied with agile, pointed wings, the white flash of the underwing in sharp contrast to their black tummies. They head to a...

Great Bustard on the late-summer plains (Martin Kelsey) There was no fanfare of bird song to greet dawn on the plains this morning, just the caress of distant sheeps' bells. Late summer days start gently. I stood to watch the roseate sun break the horizon and rise until the orb was entirely in view, with just a gossamer strand of cloud breaking its purity. In lieu of sound there was purposeful motion. Strings of Cattle Egrets ventured forth from their roosts in search of grazing sheep, probably heading back to same field that they foraged in the day before. Packs of Spotless Starlings sped low across the flaxen dried grasses, landing too amongst livestock. Almost all appeared to be juvenile birds, entering puberty as it were, with the oily black feathers of adulthood growing amongst grey brown juvenile plumage, like adolescent bumfluff on the chin. A male Montagu's Harrier crossed my vision, in a long low glide, wavering in unseen currents, without a single flap of the wing...

A flock of Curlew Sandpipers with a Dunlin (David Lindo) Stealthily under cover of darkness they move. And finding them in the first light of day helps me break the stasis of summer.  The season seems sluggish by the end of July. The afternoon spike of heat pushes all life to siesta. All appears still, even the sky is empty. The nights are relatively silent, compared to the amphibian and strident mole cricket choruses of late winter and spring, a gentle soporific hum of crickets broken only by the monotonous poot of Scops Owls. And yet across the skies at night, birds are moving. Remarkably, shorebirds that were in the Siberian arctic perhaps just a couple of weeks ago are opting to cross the interior of the Iberian peninsular, rather than follow coastlines down to their African destinations. We came across yesterday a group of 13 Curlew Sandpipers,  all still showing their russet summer dress. They were feeding alongside some Little Stints and Dunlin. All were adults t...