One more Spanish bird for our list!
We score another woodpecker on our last morning in the Picos. Apologies for no blog yesterday. Two good reasons: 1. The only internet café was shut all day, and 2. the weather was appalling, torrential rain and low cloud all day, so not many birds. We even tried driving to the coast in the hope of shaking off the rain but in fact the weather was worse, not only rain but also a gale-force wind.This morning we packed our bags and headed out of the Picos. It was bitterly cold with a fresh dusting of snow on the high ground but at least the rain had stopped. For the first few miles we climbed up out of the valley to a height of 1300m. We took this section slowly, mainly because of the icy road, but also to do some roadside birding. Rock Buntings were easily seen but little else of note. We scanned hard for Wallcreeper at likely looking spots in the hope that the bad weather had driven them back down from the high tops but no luck. Dropping down from the high pass, we stopped beside a reservoir to admire the snow-capped hills in the distance and were treated to the song of an Iberian Chiffchaff and a pair of displaying Great Crested Grebes. Then came a short burst of heavy machine gun fire from the adjacent woodland. No need to take cover, this was the unmistakeable sound of a drumming Black Woodpecker, a new bird for our year list! Sadly despite a search, we were unable to see the bird. However, we are pretty much guaranteed getting to grips with this monster woodpecker when we visit Scandinavia later in the year.Once we reached better roads, birding became harder as speed increased but we were fortunate enough to still have a marvellous view of a low-flying Black Vulture just north of Madrid. We found a hotel in Alcala not far from the airport in preparation for our flight tomorrow back to the UK and then on to Texas the following morning.Bird species total: 1913
Posted 6pm Alcala, Spain, 11th April