Madrid's Manzanares river runned through the western part of the city squeezed between the two directions of the ring highway M-30. The burial of the highway was conducted from 2004 to 2007. The birds however were fairly safe from people or dogs walled into the highway first, and the construction works later.
The recovery of the river as urban space were conducted in 2008-2011 when it was opened to the public. They were pleasant transformations for humans, but less for birds. Converting a river with banks and vegetation in a channel in which the water sheet level remains like a mirror left to moorhens, herons and egrets with a water level too high now for their legs. They had to move a few miles below.
Other birds like cormorants,mallards or seagulls have not been affected.
This is a memory of the birds of an urban stretch of the river that doesn´t exist now.
More in
http://birdingmanzanares.blogspot.com.es/