Aiguamolls
We're about to spend our 4th night at Aiguamolls de L'Emporda, and I'm knocking this up on the laptop, hopefully to post soon. This is a superb coastal wetland area not far from the border with France, and is popular with birdwatchers.
The weather has mostly been dull, but today we had our first decent sun for a while, and hurray, finally our first dragonflies of the trip, with 3 species being identified. The best for me was the one that caused lots of excited twitchy fuss last year in the UK (though I didn't see any) Vagrant Emperor. We saw at least 2 here, along with a few Red-veined Darters and a couple of Iberian Blue-tailed Damselflies. The latter we only identified thanks to Nicky's digital camera, which enabled us to zoom in on their anal appendages.
During our first evening here we stumbled across a real rarity. An actual pretty much full-plumaged French punk rocker, free camping in his van, who knew that the Tringa stagnatilis in our scopes was one and was called one. This was obviously an excellent excuse to park up together, break out the weapons-grade hooch, and talk rubbish till the wee small hours, until one of us (I won't mention any names in order to preserve her dignity) signalled it was time to call it a night by falling into a ditch to the point of being completely submerged and blowing bubbles. Next morning we were woken by the parkies because we had (stupidly) blocked a track that was almost never used. And we must have looked a right mess, especially with lots of wet clothes hanging out to dry on the reserve's fencing. Oh dear. So we humbly moved, and most of the day was written off with crushing hangovers. Hmmm.
Anyway, we've spent most of our time here birding with our new French friend Arnaud, mostly at the south end of the El Cortalet section of the reserve, but also around the area known as Three Bridges and Estany de Vilaut.
Highlights in the El Cortalet area have included a Marsh Sandpiper, a rather sorry-looking White-fronted Goose, 2 Temminck's Stints, at last 2 Rollers, 50+ Wood Sandpipers, 15+ Ruff, calling Scops Owl and Golden Oriole, lots of Great Reed and Reed Warblers, a few Melodious, Willow and Garden Warblers, Common, Pallid and Alpine Swifts, 8+ Glossy Ibis, c10 Squacco Herons, lots of Purple Herons, a Black Stork, a few Whiskered Terns, lots of Black-winged Stilts, a few Flamingos, maybe 6 Great Egrets, 2 Collared Pratincoles, 20+ Spotted Redshanks, Garganey, Marsh Harriers, Short-toed Eagle, Water Rail, Whimbrel, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, Pied Flycatchers, more tame Nightingales and Cetti's Warblers than I've seen anywhere else by miles, etc.
The Vilaut 3 Bridges area also produced 4 Red-rumped Swallows with the huge hirundine flocks, 10+ Turtle Doves, a Whinchat, Woodchat Shrikes, an amazing dense ball of 170+ bubbling Bee-eaters, Hoopoes, calling Quail, (probably reintroduced) Lesser Kestrel, etc.
I also figured that there was a chance that the only reason why Wolly was rarely seen here was the comparative lack of knobheads playing “where's wolly?” by trawling all the available tamarisk with a recording of their call. So I gave it a go. And that's absoloutely right. I didn't see any.
A particularly nice surprise was meeting BF's Rosbifs here, and his dad. They'd apparently been just behind us at El Planeron, and they worked out that it must be us and our van in the car park here. They've been gripping us off round here right left and centre with would be trip-ticks of course, so far including Spotted Crake, Red-backed Shrike and Bonelli's Eagle! Hope the rest of your trip goes well if you read this guys, and thanks for your hot gen on the Thingies too! :t:
It's now the next day and we're leaving the area, and have got WIFI in Roses. Today we popped into the Estany Europa and had great views of what was presumably Rosbifs' Spotted Crake in front of the furthest hide (Miloques?), if it was even the same lake!! Also saw a Purple Swamphen, Golden Oriole and a couple of Red-crested Pochard there.
245. Ruff
246. Wood Sandpiper
247. Great Reed Warbler
248. White-fronted Goose
249. Marsh Sandpiper
250. Temminck's Stint
251. Scops Owl
252. Roller
253. Spotted Crake
1.Iberian Blue-tailed Damselfly
2.Red-veined Darter
3.Vagrant Emperor