Wednesday 8 April 2015

Extremadura: The final countdown!

A lone Montagu's Harrier drifting over the Extremadura landscape
I spent a fantastic Easter period roaming the southern portion of Extremadura visiting places way off the beaten track. Some of the places I visited will feature in a forthcoming tour that I'm planning in September especially seeing that my original tour became fully booked within a couple of weeks.

Keep an eye on my website www.theurbanbirder.com for the tour details but in the meantime, I have listed the species that I saw on my trip. I was particularly happy to connect with vagrant Ring-necked Ducks and a Lesser Yellowlegs. The Garganeys were a pleasure to see, the Quail a pleasure to hear and I was delighted to self-find a day roosting Eagle Owl on a mountainside. A real needle in a haystack job!

But the 14 species of raptor (excluding Eagle and Little Owls) was something special. Extremadura truly is a birder's paradise!

Great Crested Grebe
Black-necked Grebe
Dabchick
Cormorant
Little Bittern
Night Heron
Cattle Egret
Little Egret
Great Egret
Grey Heron
Purple Heron
White Stork
Glossy Ibis
Spoonbill
Greater Flamingo
Griffon Vulture
Black Vulture
Osprey
Golden Eagle
Iberian Imperial Eagle
Short-toed Eagle
Booted Eagle
Bonelli’s Eagle
Black Kite
Marsh Harrier
Montagu’s Harrier – darkish morph male seen also
Common Buzzard
Kestrel
Lesser Kestrel
Greylag
Shelduck
Mallard
Gadwall
Shoveler
Wigeon
Teal
Garganey
Pochard
Tufted Duck
Ring-necked Duck
Red-legged Partridge
((Quail))
((Pheasant))
Moorhen
Coot
Purple Swamphen
Great Bustard
Little Bustard
Avocet
Black-winged Stilt
Little Ringed Plover
Little Stint
Wood Sandpiper
Green Sandpiper
Common Sandpiper
Redshank
Greenshank
Lesser Yellowlegs
Snipe
Black-headed Gull
Yellow-legged Gull
Lesser Black-back
Gull-billed Tern
Whiskered Tern
Wood Pigeon
Collared Dove
Cuckoo
Great Spotted Cuckoo
Eagle Owl
Little Owl
Pallid Swift
Alpine Swift
Hoopoe
Kingfisher
Bee-eater
Iberian Green Woodpecker
Crested Lark
Thekla Lark
((Woodlark))
Calandra Lark
Swallow
Red-rumped Swallow
House Martin
Water Pipit
Meadow Pipit
White Wagtail
Yellow Wagtail
Nightingale
Black Redstart
Whinchat
Stonechat
Blue Rock Thrush
Song Thrush
Blackbird
Blackcap
Sardinian Warbler
Subalpine Warbler
Zitting Cisticola
Cetti’s Warbler
((Reed Warbler))
((Great Reed Warbler))
Willow Warbler
Chiffchaff
Great Tit
Blue Tit
((Long-tailed Tit))
Penduline Tit
Iberian Grey Shrike
Woodchat Shrike
Azure-winged Magpie
Magpie
Jackdaw
Chough
Raven
Spotless Starling
House Sparrow
Spanish Sparrow
Chaffinch
Linnet
Goldfinch
Greenfinch
Serin
Corn Bunting

125 species
((heard))


1 comment:

Margaret Birding For Pleasure said...

Sounds like you really enjoyed this trip and you certainly did see alot of birds of prey.