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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Extremadura - rice fields (1 Viewer)

Meropes

Well-known member
Just returned from 5 wonderful days in the Trujillo and Oropesa areas. Saw a great variety of birds, as always, but decided for the first time to try the paddyfields around Madrigalejo, following the Muddeman guide route. They were all dried ploughed fields, as far as we could tell - mile after mile of them! Serves us right for not researching beforehand and/or using a local guide. Does anyone know if there is a planting season or, if year round, where there are usually some active paddyfields in early May? We still saw some great birds that day, particularly on the plains south of Zorita, and my first common waxbills in Europe, but the area was not quite the wader-fest we had hoped for!

Matt
 
I don't know excactly the reasons, but it seems that all depends on the weather in winter and spring.
I have seen ricefields starting flooded end of april (after a warm and moisty spring) as well end of june
after more dry periods....
 
I don't know excactly the reasons, but it seems that all depends on the weather in winter and spring.
I have seen ricefields starting flooded end of april (after a warm and moisty spring) as well end of june
after more dry periods....

Thanks. A lesson to me either to use a guide or at least to get some local knowledge before I travel! I might add that we didn't do badly around the parched ricefields - nice flock of over 20 collared pratincoles north of Madrigalejo, a few common sands and LRPs together with black winged stilts and cattle egrets in the pools before the solar farm on the Vegas Altas road, purple heron and common waxbills in reeds on the Gargaligas River, spotted flycatchers and golden orioles all over the place.
 
yes, today I saw many paddy fields being flooded, thus to be seen were Stilts, Little ringed plovers, Gull billed terns, Marsh harriers, Greenshanks, Redshanks, Common sandpiper, Cattle egret, etc. Next weeks and months
more species to be expected. - henk
 
Hi Matt

Glad you saw something but sorry you coincided with the worst time.

The number of rice fields has multiplied enormously since I published the guide and it's getting harder, without local guides, to pinpoint the best fields at a given time.

Glad to hear that you found some Collared Pratincoles too. IMO they are losig out really badly with the incredible changes going on in the valleys, with the non-irrigated fields on the valley sides being either made into paddies or irrigated for tomatoes, etc., and everything which can be flooded becoming a paddy, or, in the latest trend, turning into fruit orchards...

The long and the short is that the agristeppe habitat, previously so good for great and little bustards, b-b sandgrouse, Montagu's harrier & roller (shocking declines there...), stone-curlew, etc. is just disappearing and the birds with it.

I'll bear the comment in mind for the next ed., which is still in prep...

Regards

John
 
I'll bear the comment in mind for the next ed., which is still in prep...

Hi John

Great to hear that you have a new edition in prep. I find your guide absolutely fantastic, by far the best for the area. It has introduced us to so many wonderful birds and corners of Extremadura (and, as we discovered this year when staying in Oropesa, a bit of neighbouring Castilla La Mancha, where, following a route in your guide, we had simply wonderful views of two pairs of black winged kites one afternoon, to the background calls of quail, which kicked off our trip in style!).

Best
Matt
 
Hi Matt

Thanks for the kind comments.

The region requires an encyclopaedic guide given the amazing number of sites. The new version will definitely have a greater number of sites to visit, but there have been so many changes to sites, roads, statuses etc. that it's become one of those 'never-ending tasks'.

I'm now hoping to get most of it done in September...

Cheers

J
 
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