Hawfinches and Lesser Spots

I returned yesterday from the morning school-run and parked the car in the drive beside our Judas Tree. In the last couple of weeks it has shed its leaves and it will be bare now until Easter when its buds will open to an explosion of deep pink. A quiet short call drew my attention and I looked up. A Hoopoe sat perched above me - that didn't make the noise. And then some movement. Close to the Hoopoe a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker was busy looking for food, tapping away on a dead snag on the tree. I quietly withdrew and entered the house, leaving this sparrow-sized woodpecker in peace to continue foraging. Looking out of the dining room window into our olive orchard, a party of House Sparrows was pecking away on the ground, whilst close by a party of the slightly more robust Spanish Sparrows were doing the same. A couple of Chaffinches were nearby. But dwarfing them all was a splendid male Hawfinch (see John Hawkins' photo), also on the ground, looking for fallen olives. Its rich mustard brown cap contrasted with its grey bull neck, whilst the fascinating curled feathers on its wing were like the blue-black ink that I used when I owned a fountain pen.

Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers and Hawfinches, two of my favourite birds and both with special meaning to me. As a twelve-year old I used to explore the oak woods near Abergavenny in South Wales, on the edge of the Black Mountains. Forty years later I can still vividly remember the morning that I descended a bracken-covered clearing towards a line of trees along a field boundary, spotting some movement high in one of them and my elation in realising I was watching my first Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, a long sought-after species for me. Not far from that spot, that same year, I discovered a place where Hawfinches could be found and I can still picture the first one I saw, typically perched on the top of the tallest tree.

Here in Extremadura both species are not uncommon and I see both in our garden. Hawfinches are almost daily visitors (although harder to see in April when they are breeding), whereas Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers are less regular. However in late winter and early spring I can hear a male drumming most mornings, and sometimes it will do so on the wooden telegraph post beside our front gate and indeed in the same Judas Tree that I saw the bird feeding in. In Extremadura they seem quite associated with cork oak trees and it must be more than a coincidence that close to us are ancient cork oaks, planted along boundary lines.

The pair of White Stork are back on their nest on the village church, whilst the first Barn Swallow was seen over the garden on 22nd January. Yesterday evening as I took Patrick for a seven-a-side football match, a party of Barn Swallows were feeding over the lake in the town park in Trujillo whilst above them my first House Martin of the year headed to the town centre.

Looking ahead to 2012

I hope it is not too late to wish you all a Happy New Year from the Kelsey family (here pictured in the square in Trujillo last summer, with Patrick proudly carrying his replica of the World Cup after an end of term celebration)! We saw the New Year in having fulfilled a long held promise to make a return visit to our old home in India, celebrating with close friends. We then spent a wonderfully relaxing and refreshing few days near the town of Dehradun in the foothills of the Himalayas, at the house of our dear friends Alpana and Bikram Grewal. The beautiful garden that they have created runs down to a mountain river. There Patrick and I spent every afternoon, watching Common, White-throated and Crested Kingfishers, Brown Dippers and other riverine species. Patrick's goal was to get photographs of as many birds as possible and in particular of kingfishers, and he spent hours, literally, patiently waiting to catch the moment when a kingfisher hovered or dived. Whilst waiting on one occasional, we found a Spotted Forktail foraging at the water's edge and Patrick with new practiced field skills managed to approach it closely to take this excellent photo, which would make anyone proud....and it certainly made me very proud of him.

Bird photography is becoming more and more popular of course as the quality of digital equipment increases. A growing proportion of the people staying with us in Extremadura are interested in photography, at all levels. This ranges from what may be considered opportunistic photography as a complementary activity to the prime objective of watching birds, to those who are coming with a more single-minded mission to obtain photos of a select range of species. For the latter, there are starting to be available here specialist services from people who have permanent hides set up for species like bustards and vultures. I am always happy to give advice for those interested in contracting such services - local regulations are strict, so it is important to make sure that the people offering such facilities have obtained the necessary licences and permits, as well as being careful to avoid disturbance to the birds. I will post a blog next month to give more information on what clients can expect.

We had only just returned from India when I headed off for a short piece of work in Angola (from where I am posting this blog). As I left, the winter landscape in Extremadura was looking worrying dry - we had gone a month without rain to speak of. The weather was gloriously sunny with cloudless skies throughout the Christmas period, but such pleasures come with a price later on. At least I could enjoy during my brief sojourn at home, a walk around the hill. This I aim to do at the very least two times in the heart of winter, counting every bird with the results being sent in to the Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO) for their long-term monitoring of bird populations. Two walks combined this year, a total of four hours beside the olive groves, holm oaks and pasture yielded 1526 individual birds of 43 species with Blackcaps once again the most abundant species (241 individuals counted), followed by Chaffinch with 196. Another typical winter visitor for us here, the European Robin was present with no fewer than 72 birds counted. Year by year these counts, combined across the country, will start to show trends, if any, in the populations of winter birds.

Monfragüe's first visitors

Everybody who visits Extremadura with an interest in birds, and probably almost all visitors who come for other reasons too (be they cultural, gastronomic, landscape and so on) will visit the Monfragüe National Park at least once during their stay. This 18,000 hectare national park (declared as such in 2007, but previously a "natural park" since 1979) sits within a 100,000 hectare biosphere reserve and is one of the most important breeding areas for birds of prey in Europe. Indeed for the Black Vulture it has one of the largest breeding concentrations in the world with over 300 pairs. There is nowhere else where one can watch breeding vultures (three species), Black Stork, Spanish Imperial Eagle and Eagle Owl at such close quarters. Indeed so extraordinary can the views be, that local birders have nicknamed Monfragüe the "zoo". Tens of thousands of people come to Monfragüe every year specifically to watch birds and it is estimated that the total number of people who visit the park annually runs into hundreds of thousands. It is one of the few places in Extremadura where one is likely to bump into other birders, but the infrastructure and viewing facilities are so good that rarely does it feel crowded.

However, Monfragüe is much more than an amazing birding spot. Its history is very rich with a castle of Arabic origin and the medieval Cardinal's Bridge which acted as a key crossing place of the Tagus river (the longest river in the Iberian peninsular) for traders and livestock drovers travelling between Trujillo and Plasencia. The rocks are some of the oldest in Spain with extraordinary geological features visible. The folds in the rocks, pushing the sandstone strata vertically in places, created fissures and small caves and it is in these that some of the most fascinating aspects of the human presence in Monfragüe can be experienced. There are about 120 sites in the park where there are prehistoric cave paintings. The finest of these (see my photo) are visible in a cave just below the famous castle itself. The photo shows three types of painting superimposed. There is a lower line of rather stick-like figures, one with a plumed head-dress, with a smaller figure on the right of the group - perhaps a child. These date back to the Bronze Age. Immediately above them are other figures, probably painted using finger tips dipped in a paint made from Iron Oxide and eggs, these are thought to be from the Copper Age. However, the upper figure is superimposed onto a painting of an animal (a deer): this goes back about 11,000 years, to the Epipaleolithic. This wonderful and highly-prized collection of rock art can be visited by simply joining one of the guided tours of the cave. All a visitor needs to do is to go the park's information office and book a place on the tour. It costs nothing and usually the guide can speak English, if required. It is so easy that it is remarkable that more visitors do not take the opportunity of seeing these paintings at such close quarters.

The cave is narrow and leaning against one side of the cave to view the rock art on the other, one can imagine how people passing through Monfragüe thousands of years ago, sought refuge in the cave (it is much too small to have been a dwelling place). Whilst in the cave they would have crouched rather like I was doing, back against one wall, reaching out with paint-smeared fingers to the other wall. Over their left shoulders, these ancient visitors to Monfragüe would have looked out onto the undulating tree-covered landscape to the south of the cliff-face, as I was looking out onto the dehesa oak wood pasture today, the view only broken by the shape of a passing Griffon Vulture, gliding past at eye-level.

Dance Imperial

Sometimes the best comes last. It was a mid-November day with frontal systems bringing bands of overcast weather and gusts of wind, with brief breaks in the cloud with sunshine. It was just the day to be out in wide-open spaces, on the plains, under the vast dome of sky with its ever-changing tones, vast brushstrokes of whites, greys and blues. This was the sort of day when the big birds of prey, like the vultures, could drift across a whole field of view, with barely a flap, cruising rather than soaring. A few skeins of cranes and geese were moving southwest. On the plains themselves we found parties of Great and Little Bustard and a flock of over a hundred Pin-tailed Sandgrouse busy feeding on a short sward of fresh autmun grass.

We left the vehicle and walked east along an ancient drovers' trail, a Cañada Real, established by Royal (= "Real") decree early in Medieval times. For centuries these were the routes taken by the drovers and their herds of cattle or flocks of sheep, like nomadic pastorists bringing their animals off the northern mountains in the autumn, following the landscape as it became green after the October rains to grazing pastures to the south. They retraced their steps in the spring: thousands of animals moving along these strips of common land. This transhumance has almost died out and most of the movement is today by truck, but the trails remain as ribbons of public land, now marked with little granite posts bearing the initials VP ("Via Pecuaria" or Livestock trail). They give wonderful access across plains and into dehesa woodland and it was along one of these we spent the afternoon.

We headed initially across mixed farming land, rough pastures and cereals, but quickly the landscape because dominated by lavander with scattered bushy holm oaks. It was superb open terrain and looked excellent for eagles, indeed as we walked we flushed a couple of Iberian Hares, a much-favoured prey species of Golden Eagle here. However, by now we were being grazed by a belt of heavy rain, which although staying mercifully just to our west, made the sky damp and gloomy - certainly not good eagle weather. The breeze eventually carried the heavy shower onwards and away and gradually a few Griffon Vultures started to rise in the sky. I caught a glimpse of an eagle flying low, perhaps a couple of kilometres away, but soon it was gone. Shafts of late afternoon sunlight penetrated the thick cloud and a rainbow appeared over the path ahead. At that moment I heard a barking call, somewhat higher in tone than a Raven - unmistakeably the sound of a Spanish Imperial Eagle announcing its arrival. It quickly moved on stage, wings held close to its body, and then swooped upwards getting higher and higher, before turning to stoop downwards. This it repeated as its mate arrived from the same direction and we witnessed the sheer joy of the pair sky-dancing, rising and falling in magnificent loops, with sunlight catching their brilliant white leading edges to their wings, with sometimes a backdrop of moody storm clouds, and sometimes against patches of clear blue sky.

It was one of those moments when we, as observers, could feel both immensely privileged and at the same time extraordinarily humble, for to the eagles we must have been just mere earth-tied specks as they proclaimed their dominance of the skies in their courtship dance.

Cranes and Quinces

It is as if by magic and although it happens every year, it always amazes and surprises. A week ago the landscape was parched yellow, then we had two days of (very belated) rain and the temperatures dropped to the more seasonal low twenties. There has been an utter transformation with the pastures and plains turning emerald green. Looking closely at the ground, every square centimetre is filling with sprouting grass shoots and germinating seedlings. Out on the plains, there are thousands of the delightfully named ephmeral Autumn Snowflake: a tiny snowdrop-like flower on the most slender of reddish-brown stalks, along with the delicate white Narcissus serotinus, a widespread autumn-flowering bulb of understated beauty: six rather narrow white petals with an orange-yellow cup. Despite being early November, a few butterflies are still on the wing: Clouded Yellows, Red Admirals, whilst the Long-tailed Blues and Lang's Short-tailed Blues persist on the Daphne growing in our garden.

Autumn is marked also, of course, by the arrival of the Common Cranes, which in their own way also transform the landscape, or rather soundscape, with their gorgeous and evocative trumpeting becoming an almost constant sound whenever one is close to the their feeding and roosting areas. Perhaps a few days later in arriving than usual this year, and numbers are still building up (the winter peak is not normally reached until late November), there were nevertheless several thousand already looking quite at home on the rice and maize stubble fields just to the south of us. As is normal, some elected to feed in family groups, a pair of adults with one or two brown-headed juveniles, whilst others were in larger flocks. In the distance, lines and broken skeins of cranes moved against a dramatic sky where shafts of sunlght pierced the clouds. In a period of sunshine, a pair of Golden Eagles took to the wing, soaring with buoyant flight against a pale blue sky, whilst a Black Stork made an appearance just minutes later.

Back at home, I completed another autumn task, labelling the thirty jars of quince jam that I had made a few days earlier. Although there were plenty of quinces on the trees this year, many had starting rotting on the tree, so it was a time-consuming task to select suitable specimens and prepare the fruit for jam-making. Interesting, my parents told me that exactly the same had happened to their quinces, growing in a sheltered spot in their garden in north Norfolk, in England. Fascinating. Still, I had enough fruit to make a delicious jam, which will keep our guests happy at breakfast right through winter and spring.

White-rumped Swifts

I had walked past that tiny cave dozens of times, but that morning with some visitors, I ventured into its mouth. Perhaps there would be some bats and certainly the view across the dehesa woodland pasture was superb. The ground was still parched dusty-yellow, contrasting with the dark green forms of the holm oaks. We stood just inside the entrance and took in the scenery. Suddenly whoooosh! I was aware just of quite a large animal flying past our heads (we could feel the air move) and seemingly disappearing ahead of us. A split-second impression. Was it a bat? Well, it seemed a bit too big and I was sure that I had seen a flash of white. A minute or so later, it swept out again, also just a few centimetres from our heads and this time, although the view was almost as brief, it was obvious that it was a White-rumped Swift.

This is quite a mystery species. Its home is Africa, where it is widespread and common. It was first recorded in Spain in Cadiz province in the late 1960s and was initially misidentifed as Little Swift (which also occurs there), although the two species are actually quite different in appearance. As you can see from the excellent photo by Raymond de Smet, it has a bold white throat, a rather narrow white rump and quite a slender tail, with the fork often held closed, so that the tail looks pointed. It is somewhat smaller than a Common Swift. It was first recorded in Extremadura in 1979. It nests in old Red-rumped Swallow nests, under overhangs on rock faces and sometimes bridges. Whilst a scarce and localised species, it is undoubtedly under-recorded. No one knows how many pairs breed in Extremadura, but we guess at least 50 pairs and probably over a hundred.

To see White-rumped Swift, you need to be looking anytime from late April to early May (they are the latest of our four breeding swift species to arrive here) in rocky gorges or steep river valleys, where there are Red-rumped Swallows. Carefully checking any swift you see, keeping it in view as it twists and turns, waiting to see if the white band on the rump shows. There are often feeding parties of Common Swifts in these sites, so more times than not the swift turns out to be the all dark Common. But the interesting thing about the White-rumped Swifts is that they stay much later here, well into the autumn, long after the Common Swifts have migrated. My encounter in the cave was on 19th October, and the latest date ever recorded in Extremadura is 29th October. So any swift seen in October in such habitat is very likely to be White-rumped (apart from the much larger and differently patterned Alpine Swifts, a few individiuals of which also linger on into October).

Just five minutes after the swift had flown out, in it whooshed again, closely followed by another. This time we were prepared and watched their trajectory. They had in fact flown directly (and amazingly rapidly) up into their nest, just above our heads. An old Red-rumped Swallow nest, it showed the diagnostic little white down feather at its entrance, which for some reason the swifts place there. What was extraordinary to watch was the way they entered such a narrow rocky entrance and then up to the nest: we could see how they folded their wings to squeeze at full speed through the narrowest of gaps. Realising we were so close to the nest, where they probably still had young, we withdraw from the scene as quickly as possible, leaving them in peace. I had never dreamed of ever being as close as this to one of our most enigmatic species.

Autumn drought

It is now mid-October, but it still feels almost like summer. The temperature is only now starting to edge its way slowly down from daytime maxima of 30 degrees and we have had no rain to speak of (apart from a few showers at the start of September) since June. People are starting to get worried. By now autumn rains should have started, the landscape should have started turning green. Our olive trees are laden with fruit, but the olives are small and are getting wrinkled. If there is not rain over the next few weeks, they will not fatten up and many will fall prematurely. The prospect for the winter olive harvest is not looking good. In my vegetable garden we still have tomatoes, melons and courgettes, but the winter cabbages are disappearing (I think by a mouse which literally pulls them downwards from its burrow) - one day the plant is there, the next day it is gone, with just a little hole showing where the stem had been.

The weird thing is that even though the weather and landscape scream summer, the garden birds are telling me autumn and winter. In the last blog I wrote about the autumn song of Robins. Now their song at dawn and dusk is accompanied by that of wintering Chiffchaffs whilst Black Redstarts (see John Hawkins´ photo) are taking up their winter territories. Yesterday and today I heard a male Lesser Spotted Woodpecker drumming from the top of dead branch just down the lane from the house, with another male drumming in response in the distance - signs again of ensuring that territories are identifed.

I also watched today a very brightly plumaged male Greenfinch having just completed its post-breeding moult. It was in spectacularly pristine condition, a really gorgeous bird with vivid yellow flashes on wings and tail and dove grey wings contrasting strongly with its mossy green body. It was gorging itself on cypress cones, a favourite food here in the garden in the winter for Hawfinches as well. As it was doing that, a Blackcap, a Chiffchaff and a Song Thrush were on the lawn below the tree, all of them winter visitors.