My Navarra Region bird list

Griffon Vulture
What an amazing few days I have just had!

Navarra is a great place for birding and a shot hop from the UK.

A full version of my memorable trip to the Navarra Region in Spain will appear in a future issue of Bird Watching Magazine.

Meanwhile, here's my trip list

Navarra Region 13 -16 February 2014

Great Crested Grebe

Little Grebe

Cormorant

Cattle Egret

Grey Heron

White Stork

Mute Swan

Greylag

Canada Goose 

Shelduck 

Mallard

Gadwall

Pintail

Shoveler

Wigeon

Teal

Red-crested Pochard

Pochard

Ferruginous Duck

Tufted Duck

Lammergeier

Griffon Vulture

Golden Eagle

Red Kite

Marsh Harrier

Hen Harrier

Common Buzzard

Sparrowhawk

Goshawk

Kestrel

Peregrine

Merlin

Red-legged Partridge

((Water Rail))

Coot

Lapwing

Green Sandpiper

Snipe

Ruff

Black-headed Gull

Yellow-legged Gull

Black-bellied Sandgrouse

Pin-tailed Sandgrouse

Rock Dove

Wood Pigeon

Collared Dove

Kingfisher

Green Woodpecker

Middle Spotted Woodpecker

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Skylark

Crested Lark

Thekla Lark

Calandra Lark

((Dupont’s Lark))

Crag Martin

Meadow Pipit

White/Pied Wagtails

Grey Wagtail

Dipper

Wren

Robin

Blue Rock Thrush

Black Redstart

Stonechat

Song Thrush

Redwing

Mistle Thrush

Fieldfare

Blackbird

Blackcap

Sardinian Warbler

Dartford Warbler

Zitting Cisticola

((Cetti’s Warbler))

Chiffchaff

((Goldcrest))
Firecrest

Great Tit

Coal Tit

Blue Tit

Crested Tit

Long-tailed Tit

Nuthatch

Wallcreeper

((Common Treecreeper))

Short-toed Treecreeper

Iberian Grey Shrike

Magpie

Jay

Red-billed Chough

Alpine Chough

Jackdaw

Carrion Crow

Raven

Common Starling

Spotless Starling

House Sparrow

Tree Sparrow

Rock Sparrow

Chaffinch

Linnet

Goldfinch

Greenfinch

Serin

Reed Bunting

Cirl Bunting

Corn Bunting

108 Species

3 Lifers

((heard))

Still wandering around Navarra

 A drifting female Marsh Harrier

Thekla Lark

 Common Starling

 1st winter Golden Eagle

 The same eagle powering past

Eurasian Serin

Wanderings around Navarra, Spain

 A pair of Griffon Vultures

 A female Cirl Bunting looking up!

 The gorge at Arbaiun

 A flyby Red Kite

 Lammergeier

A slightly better shot

Urban birding in and around Pamplona, Spain

 TUB with artist & bird guider Gorka Gorospe

 Angry skies over Zolina

 It looks like rain

The cliffs at Etxauri

The limestone detail

 Spottless Starling

 White Stork coming in to land

 Now a pair, they settle down for a touch of courtship

 An overflying Griffon Vulture

Chiffchaff in Pamplona

The end of a very long line

The very last edition of Birding World

I started this year with all the best intentions of keeping a regularly updated blog with all my latest news and views. Well, so much for that. My main excuse is the fact that I was frantically finishing my next book - Look Up! How To Be An Urban Birder.

Had I not been so preoccupied I would have been lamenting the loss of Birding World which published its last edition in December after 27 years in early January. I will really miss this monthly magazine because of the great ID articles that they carried, the publication's pioneering attitude towards splitting species and of course, the monthly rarity updates for not only the UK but for Europe as well. The final issue also showed me how out of touch I had become. Birding World always educated me with latest splits so when I saw the editorial covering the occurrences of Laurence's Brent Goose I thought, 'What the hell is that? Never heard of it!'

I have had a long connection with Birding World because I knew co-founder, Richard Millington from back in the day. Back then the magazine was known as 'Twitching' and was produced quite cheaply as a black-and-white stapled print out. At the time I was working at The Sunday Times and I managed to secure an editorial piece for the magazine in the paper. A thankful Richard Millington gave me five years free subscription thereafter and my love affair with Twitching and latterly Birding World began.

I guess with the advent of the internet and with it the fact that the up to date birding news is now instantly available must have taken its toll on subscriptions. But there is something very visceral about receiving the news in the form of a magazine that you can file away and refer back to. Yes, I will miss it. Not least because it made me visit my mum on a monthly basis. You see, the address for my subscription was at her house. I never changed it. Don't get me wrong, I love visiting my old mum but it made her feel good to hand over my copy of Birding World still wrapped in its delivery cellophane. Good things never last.