The Ebro Delta, Catalonia, Spain (1 Viewer)

Excellent!!!!!!!!

Iben, I'm less than an hour after being back home from Catalonia, and what an excellent trip it turned out to be. Thanks for all your help and information.

The little crakes (male and female) put on a great show at Riet Vell, but they were upstaged by the appearance of a Baillon's crake. While I was photographing the Baillons, someone noticed that the male little crake had appeared, so they were both in view at the same time!

While I was waiting to photograph a great reed warbler at Canal Vell the following day I looked over my shoulder just in time to see a falcon close-by in silhouette. It looked sufficiently unlike a kestrel to make me want a better look. It was a male red-footed falcon that obliged by landing on the power line that runs from the restaurant towards the mirador. It perched on the line at least three times, allowing close approach and dozens of photos until it flew off when a bird-scarer fired. I see from your website that you had one at La Tancada the other day - perhaps the same bird?

The Delta however seemed to be holding fewer birds in total than in previous visits at this time of year. Terns in particular (black terns especially) seemed to be in greatly reduced numbers and there seemed to be fewer squacco herons around. Is this just a migration timing variation or is there something else?

Hi, im off to the aiguamolls and the ebro delta wednesday morning, thanks stephen for your help.

Are the crakes still present and showing? and also is it easy to find riet vell once i am there?

Riet Vell is easy to find. Go onto the south side of the delta at Amposta, heading for Sant Jaume. After a short distance ( a couple of km or so) bear right onto the road to Eucaliptus. The carpark for Riet Vell is about 500m short of Eucaliptus on the left hand side of the road, next to a thatched building. Follow the path through the farm to the hide.

Thanks Alan, when was the last date that you saw the crakes?

I only saw them on the 27th April (my first visit of the trip). They were seen after that, but i didn't see any when I went back on other occasions.

Having said that, the last time I was there (6th May) I was so busy photographing a male little bittern at a range of about 4 yards right in front of the hide that I doubt if I'd have noticed an ostrich walk by, never mind a little brown skulking crake!

thanks alan, i have just been speaking to my friend who i am going to spain with, it seems he is meeting you tomorrow! what a coincidence.

That would be Dave.

Alan Seaton said:

Iben, I'm less than an hour after being back home from Catalonia, and what an excellent trip it turned out to be. Thanks for all your help and information.

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Hi Alan

I am glad you had a great time here, and of course also delighted that you finally managed to see the crakes :t:

Lots of unusual birds have appeared in the delta lately, as you might have seen in our website, and it has been a very good year for Red-footed Falcon (also further north). In fact, it is the first time I've seen one in the delta! White-winged Terns are currently present (my bogey-bird for years, and then on Sunday I found two when I was on my way to l'Aldea without binoculars!!! Luckily one of them nearly landed on the car, so I got a really good look at them anyway ), along with Red-knobbed Coot, Temminck's Stint and Broad-billed Sandpiper.

I think the lack of birds that you mention is partly due to a slightly delayed migration, but also due to the birds' behaviour at this time of year. Just when the rice fields have been filled with water, they are relatively empty of food items for the birds. It takes a while for them to become full of invertebrates, fish and frogs, and the birds show little interest in most of the fields. Then you find a field that has been recently worked on, or perhaps water-filled for a while, and then you suddenly see hundreds or even thousands of birds. The other day, as I went for an afternoon drive in the delta, I was wondering about the complete lack of shorebirds - and then, just as I was going home, I spotted a small flock of Ringed Plovers in a field. I stopped, and out of the mud appeared a flock of Little Stints, more Ringed Plovers, and three Temminck's Stints. And then, a little further back, hundreds of Curlew Sandpipers and more Little Stints, etc. etc. - and of course, the fields had been ploughed earlier that afternoon! The Squacco Herons are also moving in little flocks; the other day a friend of mine saw more than 20 standing together in a field, but numbers seem 'normal' to me.

Having said that, perhaps something IS a bit different this year, because the Flamingos and several of the egrets and herons have been very late starting up their colonies, but hopefully they will have a succesful breeding season anyway. I will keep you posted.

midlandbirder said:

Are the crakes still present and showing?

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I am afraid the crakes are no longer showing off by the Riet Vell hide, but they might still be around. The female Little Crake was last seen on May 1st.


Best regards to you both,

Iben

Thanks for the reply Iben. I had a really good trip.

The male little crake appeared camera-shy. Every time I pressed the shutter, he hid his face.

The red-footed falcon was an absolute surprise. A bird I was not expecting to find there at all, but subsequent events seem to suggest it was part of a "fall", with large numbers further north.

Two years ago I was on the tower at the north side of El Clot scanning the lake, which was covered with hunting terns, mainly whiskered, but with good numbers of black terns among which was a breeding plumage white-winged black tern. It was the icing on the cake because it was the ninth species of tern I'd seen on the trip. A week earlier I saw lesser crested tern (a lifer). The tern list for the trip was; whiskered, gull-billed, little, common, caspian, sandwich, lesser crested, black, and white winged black.

I watched the whiskered terns feeding over the rice fields last week and they were taking crayfish. I'm attaching an (out of focus) photo of one losing its catch in flight.

I was kicking myself about the broad-billed sandpiper because I forgot to look for it when I was at El Golero on my final visit to the delta last Thursday (8th)- I'd seen reports of it from a couple of weeks before, but forgot about them at the time. I'd probably have missed it anyway - it's a big place and I was on my way back for dinner at the time.

I saw the collared red-knobbed coot at Canal Vell on the same day, but the combination of wind and showers meant it was a waste of time attempting to read the collar.

PS, A friend of mine called Mark was on one of your trips last week - I think it was 1st May.

New Flamingo generation on its way

Good news! :t:

Following a turbulent and rather unusual start to the breeding season, a record-breaking number of Flamingos have now settled down in the Trinitat salt pans in the Ebro Delta. 2.454 pairs of Greater Flamingo have initiated nesting attempts; this is over 600 pairs more than the previous years, where 1.800-1.900 pairs have bred in the delta.

The Flamingos habitually start pairing up and nesting in late March, but this year the first two attempts of starting up the colony were disturbed and failed, and for a while it was thought that no Flamingos were going to breed this year. The breeding had already failed in the biggest Spanish colony at Fuente de Piedra due to drought, so the colony in the Ebro Delta was the only hope for the Spanish Flamingo generation anno 2008. It was therefore with great relief that the staff of the Parc Natural del Delta de l'Ebre watched a third nesting attempt initiated in early May, this time spread out over three new locations in the salt pans. The three 'cores' within the colony were not completely synchronized, and thus the chicks will probably hatch at different times over the summer, but they all look well established.

Perhaps some of the birds from Fuente de Piedra has settled down in the Ebro Delta instead, perhaps the youngsters from the last 15 years of Flamingos breeding in the delta has suddenly boosted the colony; regardless of the reason, it is a great relief that this emblematic bird species has found peace and space to breed also this year in the delta.

Source: Parc Natural del Delta de l'Ebre, June 2008.