Getting started again
For those of us daft enough to keep lists of birds we have seen – I suppose you have to be just a weeny bit OCD or something – the start of a New Year means kicking off a new list all over again.
I personally value my observations in Alicante province above all else, and always try to get as close to 200 species in a calendar year as possible. As I write, three days into 2019, tradition has had its wicked way, and I have already had three species that managed to avoid me for the whole of 2018, namely the common but often invisible Firecrest, (difficult if your high-register hearing has gone the way of all flesh), the rapidflying and non-too common Merlin, and the shy and retiring Jack Snipe.
Lack of irrigated field means that waders are hard to come by, but conversely too much water resides in all the pools at the Visitor Centre, leaving no muddy margins – again no waders.
High-pressure weather has so far kept all the Crag Martins way up high, so the probable presence of a wintering House Martin or Swallow amongst them has been impossible to detect. When I took a look at the Salinas of Santa Pola, I saw a Whiskered Tern feeding – an unusual sight in winter, and Barry was lucky to see a Little Bittern at the Visitor Centre – another occasional winter ‘stopover.’ He also had a feeling he may have seen a Spotted Flycatcher recently, which may well be so, as they were known to have been present a couple of winters ago at Elche.
As global warming takes more and more toll, we shall see more unusual wintering birds – of this you may be certain.