Ken Cross in Europe: First Days in Spain

Tree Sparrow in a ....tree

First Day in Spain – 6 May.

The European birding adventure begins…. With long, long travel; Mapleton to Brisbane by car, Brisbane to Hong Kong flight, five hours in Hong Kong airport, 12 hours flight from Hong Kong to London, 2 hour flight to Madrid Spain. Very little sleep in that time period.

Birds enroute? Very few. Crested Myna was the only species seen from the Hong Kong Airport. Basically nothing identifiable from London.

From our hotel we went for a brief walk through the streets to a nearby park and with a few fly by species began our Spanish birding experience with 18 species – three of which were lifers for me.

Enroute we saw Common Swifts, a single Barn Swallow, House Sparrows and found several nests of House Martins, high under the eaves of the roofs of flats.

House Martin

House Martins

The park was named Quinta de Los Molinos; and it seemed to be created around an old grove of almond trees. It was well wooded around the lines of nut trees and there were many plant species including, annoyingly enough gum trees! It was a popular park with walkers, joggers and the occasionally pretty girl perched reading under a tree with her bicycle sprawled next to her.

Eurasian Wood dove

Greenfinch

Speaking of girls we saw several Tits; Blue, Coal and Long-tailed. And then lifers; Serin, Short-toed Tree-creeper, and Spotless Starling. Other species included Chaffinch, Magpies etc.

Spotless Starling [photo by Vincent Lee]

The total for day #1 - 18spp

1. Magpie

Blue Tit

2. Collared Dove

3. Wood Dove

4. Rock Dove

5. Common Swift

6. Barn Swallow

7. House Martin

8. Serin [Lifer!]

9. Short toed Treecreeper [Lifer]

10. Spotless Starling [Lifer]

11. Blue Tit

12. Coal Tit

13. Long tailed Tit

14. House Sparrow

15. Tree Sparrow

16. Greenfinch

17. Blackbird

18. Chaffinch

Coal Tit

Very sad to say we opted for fast food on our first night as we could not stay awake for the 8pm opening time for the dining room.

Day 2 in Spain saw us add quickly to our list; scoring a Black Redstart behind our hotel. It was a pretty good bird to begin the day in the cool of a ten degree morning.

19 Black Redstart

Robin

Lacking any better plan we went back to the park of the day before and added a few more species; Great Tit, Blackcap [a warbler], Pied and Spotted Flycatcher, Stock Dove and Robin! We saw every species from the day before save the Long tailed Tit. So all in all a successful morning’s birding!

20 Great Tit

Blackcap

21 Blackcap

22 Robin

23 Pied Flycatcher

24 Stock Dove

25 Spotted Flycatcher

Not a Rock but a Stock Dove

In the afternoon we boarded taxis and travelled to Parque de Juan Carlos 1. This is a vast park land with many sports facilities and artificial waters, walkways and large sculptures. It was ok but as it was so open and shade-less birding was quite uncomfortable. But, hey, it’s Spain! We got great views of Common Swifts, Barn Swallows and House Martins. Our first Mallards and Moorhens were observed on the waters, which were also densely packed with Carp from Asia and turtles from North America. White wagtail was seen soon after June Harris expressed her surprize at us not yet seeing a wagtail. To our surprise we soon saw parrots flying around – they turned out to be Monk Parakeets and they were common.

Monk Parakeets [or Quakers]

26 Mallard

27 White Wagtail

White Wagtail

28 Common Moorhen

29 Monk Parakeet

Attempting to get out of the sun we aimed for a huge area of vegetation which we soon discovered was a botanical garden. Sadly we very slowly discovered that it was impossible to enter – by this time we had walked the entire distance around the park. I saw a Green Woodpecker well – so maybe it was a lifer if the Iberian sub species is split…. I’ll have to check it out. We also saw, what was most likely, Carrion Crow and some saw a Jackdaw.

30 Green [Iberian] Woodpecker

31 Jackdaw

32 Carrion Crow

Oh I left out a species identified by photo as it flew over the Quinta de los Molinas – a Black Kite.