OUR CONTRIBUTORS Stephanie Perks
Will Stephanie Perks’ and Sally Westwood’s seven-month motorhome odyssey round Iberia inspire you to hit the road for your #My200BirdYear challenge?
recalls how a seven-month motorhome tour of Iberia yielded an impressive tick-list of more 270 birds!
Part of the fun of the #My200BirdYear challenge is shaping the challenge to suit your own birdwatching. We had a very interesting time travelling around Spain and Portugal in Frankie, our motorhome. The rewards were fantastic, including seeing 270 different species of birds on our sevenand-a-half-month journey over a course of 9,900 miles. A wide range of terrains and habitats were visited, from dusty deserts to swampy fields; from icy mountain peaks to wind-blown sand dunes.
We started out with two main challenges. We wanted to see birds we hadn’t seen before, and to get some reasonable photographs. Some of the birds we encountered were rare or scarce, and that made the experience even more exciting. The Wallcreeper was the biggest challenge. We received a hot tip from a kindly birder who had recently seen one in the Asturias, in northern Spain, two weeks before we arrived.
So, we made a detour to the planned route, with a visit to Santoña straight from the ferry, and first saw waders including Whimbrel and Greenshank, plus Little Egrets and Great Egrets.
Then we set off with the hope of seeing a Wallcreeper. We drove through the mountain passes in Asturias, and arrived at a long bridge that was fairly high, but not high enough for Frankie, our motorhome. We would have had an inch to spare if we had gone through. We were unsure if the height for Frankie included the TV aerial and two solar panels on the roof, so we decided to move on to Galicia.
Later, when we were in the Ebro Delta on the Spanish east coast, we received a
message from another friendly birder, who had seen a Wallcreeper on the wall of the Sant Pere de Rodes Monastery, north of Roses, near the French border. We visited the monastery, but didn’t see one.
Towards the end of the journey, however, another birder suggested that we visit the Picos de Europa mountain range. We took the cable car up at Fuente Dé, where Wallcreepers had been reported as nesting in the past. We were not too hopeful, as our friend had been visiting the nest area every year for eight years and had not seen one, but we hoped to see Snowfinches, Alpine Accentors and Alpine Choughs, at least.
But we had a surprise. We sat on some rocks watching out for birds. Then, I spotted a movement on the rock face behind us. I saw a bird with grey colouring, and looked for red and pale blue. It was a Wallcreeper. Then another arrived. They flew higher up, along the path. I followed and saw three pairs of Wallcreepers. The males were displaying to the females. It was a very special moment. And we also saw the Snowfinches, Alpine Choughs and Alpine Accentors.
Rare firsts
Another rare bird was the Bald Ibis. There are only a handful left in the world. We visited a known location in Tarifa, but were not hopeful due to the gale force easterly winds blowing along the whole coastal area. However, we had been informed that Bald Ibis had been seen at this one location, some distance along the sand dunes, on a tower.
The tower was a known nest site, and at its foot had information about the Bald Ibis, their status as endangered birds, and a little about their migratory patterns. As it was a day or two before we were due to drive to southern
Portugal, we visited the tower over the course of a few days and saw a large group of Glossy Ibis, but no Bald Ibis. On arriving once again, on our last day before moving on, we were rewarded by the sight of 12 Bald Ibis flying in a small flock to the tower, as we sat waiting below. I ‘accidentally’ saw a Western Orphean Warbler. I thought I had taken a photograph of a Whitethroat, but when I looked at my photo later, I realised it was a Western Orphean Warbler – a first for us both.
Other firsts were Black Wheatears, Goshawk, Black-bellied Sandgrouse, Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, Wallcreeper, Snowfinch, Alpine Accentor, Alpine Chough, Scops Owl, Wood Sandpiper, Short-toed Lark, Lesser Short-toed Lark, Citril Finch, Ferruginous Duck, Penduline Tit, Moustached Warbler, Red-necked Nightjar, Lesser Spotted Eagle, Baillon’s Crake, Spectacled Warbler, Bald Ibis, Brown-necked Raven from Africa, and a pale (possibly leucistic) Crested Lark which may have come from Africa.
Photographic challenge
At the outset of the journey I had set myself the challenge of obtaining reasonable photographs of Cetti’s Warbler, Zitting Cisticola and Kingfisher. It didn’t work out with the Cetti’s, but I was lucky with a Zitting Cisticola. I sat down low on my chair on a path by a flooded marsh in Galicia and watched Zitting Cisticolas on distant reed stems. Suddenly one popped up on a stem about 10 metres from me. I got my shot. I got many distant shots of a Kingfisher flying away over water.
I spent time sitting, over two days, and waiting for a Kingfisher to come nearer to me, at the Ebro Delta, and got the shot on the second day.
Although Frankie is a large vehicle, we managed to drive very near to bird hotspots, and being in a motorhome, we could get up early to go birding. Sometimes, it was not quite so easy to reach the hotspots, though, as many of the roads were winding, narrow, and steep. The Asturias and Picos de Europa had steep roads and sharp inclines, but
Frankie coped and so did I with my eyes closed (I wasn’t driving at the time!). Occasionally, we only became aware of the inclines when we saw the winding route on the satnav, which it’s all too easy to become dependent on.
We arrived at Laguna de Gallocanta expecting to see about 5,000 Cranes on my birthday, the 10 November. We were pleasantly surprised. The area had received heavy rain and the Laguna had water. A bird count revealed 26,000 were on and around the Laguna. That was
amazing, since the Laguna had been dry for about 16 years.
We visited Doñana, Monfragüe National Park and Ca´ceres when the spring migration was underway, and saw the greatest variety of species in those areas, and we tried to be at the best spots when migration was occurring. We were going to stay for 10 days at Tarifa, but we ended up staying for three weeks.
We drove along the coast, guided by the direction of the strong wind. There was always the possibility that we were missing birds further along or behind us, but it was fantastic to see about a thousand Cory’s Shearwaters fly over the water from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean at dawn, and the hundreds of Black Kites, hundreds of White Storks, several Red Kites, Egyptian Vultures, Short-toed Eagles and Booted Eagles. When the rain was heavy and constant, we continued on the route, but sometimes we made a detour, guided by tips received from kindly birders.
For example, we received details about a Brown-necked Raven in Murcia, which was a rare bird in Spain. We added new places to the route – Roses, Santoña, and Picos de Europa – on the advice of others. And we left some time free on the route to allow for changes, when birding was good, or if something special was about. The flexibility with the route was a strategy for seeing many species of birds, particularly during migration.
We met birders from all over Europe and made new friends. Other birders frequently gave us information about birds they had seen in the area. We introduced ourselves to people working at nature reserves and talked about the birds on their land, and they gave us details about the birds we possibly could see around the area. Gussie, Stephanie’s 16-year-old deaf Beagle, took it all in his stride. Every time he stepped out of Frankie, he had new smells. As a Beagle and a scent hound, he never had a chance to get bored with the same walk or the same smells. He loved it.
But things didn’t always turn out as planned. Several accidents occurred with Frankie. A puncture, then a burst tyre, then a lorry hit the rear-lights when Frankie was being transported on a trailer, the gas leaked over the cooker and caught fire (the neighbours on the campsite were a little concerned with the flames).
Several catches on the drawers broke, as did the hinges on the bathroom door. The inverter went ‘pop’ and stopped working, the driver’s seatbelt broke, and the internal batteries never worked well. But we had replacements and repairs carried out, getting by with limited Spanish and Portuguese (it is helpful to be able speak some of the country’s language so as to cope with unexpected events).