Last 14th of May we organized a short version of a Big Bird Day in Candeleda. The idea was to observe or hear the maximun number of differet bird species during only 4 hours in the surroundings of Candeleda. Exciting, right? We decided to make three teams of 3 to 5 persons. Each team would go birding to a particular area covering the best birding sites around Candeleda. In this way we could make a [...]
Last month we travelled to Fuerteventura on a 5 days-birding trip. We love birding in the Canary Islands, each of them are unique and have also many endemisms. We have already visited Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and Tenerife, and before heading to the westerly islands, we wanted to visit also Fuerteventura! As you can imagine, our target species was the Fuerteventura Chat (Saxicola dacotiae) but other [...]
Black Kites (Milvus migrans) are starting to show up entering from The Strait of Gibraltar after spending the winter in Africa. Hence it is a good moment to refresh the basics about Kite´s ID to differ between the Black and the Red Kite (Milvus milvus), both in flight and perched. Although aparently they are species quite strait forward to identify, sometimes (especially in poor light conditions), [...]
Tönn, the famous Spotted Eagle, is again overwintering in El Hondo (Alicante), eastern Spain. Tönn has been monitored aided by satellite tracking since 2008 from its breeding grounds in Estonia. Although its transmitter stopped some years ago, the bird is still holding it over its back – so it is still easy to identify – and since then returns every autumn to winter in El Hondo. Interestingly, [...]
During the non-breeding season, different species of finches and thrushes from central and northern Europe move in response to harsh weather conditions to southern Europe. On our birding trips at this time of the year we observe these wintering birds sharing the area with resident birds as our beloved Iberian azure-winged magpies (Cyanopica cooki). But it is not rare either to see another bird [...]