Bad weather

This weekend I went to Ebre Delta. On Saturday, I was the whole day in a lecture about bird monitoring schemes, dedicated specially to the SOCC, the Catalan Common Bird Census. It was a great journey, but the weather didn't go with us... it was a rainy day.

On Sunday morning I went to see some birds around the Delta with Marta Queralt. Despite the clouds disappeared, it was a windy day. We started looking for a 1w Citrine wagtail that was found on Saturday but we only saw lots Yellow wagtails (Motacilla flava). We went to El Serrallo ricefields then.

There, we saw a good wader concentration: 4 Marsh Sandpipers (Tringa stagnatilis), 2 Collared Pratincoles (Glareola pratincola), 1 Black-winged Stilt (Himantopus himantopus), 3 Black-tailed Godwits (Limosa limosa), +50 Common Ringed Plovers (Charadrius hiaticula), +20 Dunlins (Calidris alpina), +15 Little Stints (Calidris minuta),  24 Red Knots (Calidris canutus), 4 Curlew Sandpipers (Calidris ferruginea), 2 Ruffs (Philomachus pugnax), 2 Ruddy Turstones (Arenaria interpres), Greenshanks, Northern Lapwings...

Later, we went to Finca DACSA, a big grassland that is in the middle of ricefields, with Montse Raurell and Carles Durà. It's a good place to see birds, but the problem is that you can't go inside because is a private estate. From the road, we looked the grassland, and we found a juvenile Buff-breasted Sandpiper (Tryngites subruficollis).

Photo took by Marta Queralt López

Despite the bad weather, it was a great shorebird-morning!