Having visited Natural Parc of Aiguamolls de l'Empordà for the first time on Saturday Dee and I returned today to cover the areas we'd missed around this vast Natural Parc and to try and catch up on a few missed species.
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| White Stork - An icon of the area! |
We began near the River Muga and drove along the C-260 to the southeast corner of Castelló d'Empúries. Here there are three bridges with reeds and open water that are well worth investigating. Three raptors circling overhead turned out to be
Common Buzzard and within the reeds
Cetti's Warbler and the grating song of
Great Reed Warbler. At least four
Little Egret,
Cuckoo calling and we unfortunately spooked a
Purple Heron, which took flight and perched for a while on a nearby tree, a couple of
White Stork flew overhead.
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| Woodchat Shrike - Always a delight! |
About a half mile further on the terrain breaks out and offers some excellent habitat with flower meadow, trees, rocky areas and olive groves. There is an excellent walk, around 3km and in the gorgeous conditions Dee and I thoroughly enjoyed our time here. First species of note was a
Woodchat Shrike, then two birds on the overhead wires turned out to be
Lesser Kestrel, five seen in total. Plenty of butterflies on the wing mostly
Wall Brown,
Clouded Yellow,
Red Admiral and
Painted Lady, plus one or two
Small Heath. A couple of
Melodious Warblers were in full song and even a
Common Chiffchaff joined in.
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| Record (heat-haze) shots of Roller - thanks to Dee! |
More birds took the eye and in particular two, which turned out to be
European Roller, in fact there were probably four in the vicinity while we were here. We stayed for a while to enjoy the birds and then took refuge from the sunshine for a while in a hide overlooking L'Estany de Vilaüt. Although there was still plenty of water here the best we managed was
Greenshank,
Redshank and
Wood Sandpiper. When we emerged from the hide a
Short-toed Eagle was perched on one of the pylons before moving off after a short stay.
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| Hoopoe - Heard most of the time but strangely seldom seen! |
As per usual
Nightingales were singing from every bush and
Zitting Cisticola overhead! By the time we'd returned to the car
Corn Bunting,
Sardinian Warbler,
Tree Sparrow,
Crested Lark,
Stonechat,
Serin,
Hoopoe and a
Common Quail calling were all recorded.
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| Black-crowned Night Heron at La Massona |
After a glorious morning and early afternoon the weather had begun to deteriorate and so our last ports of call were the hides at La Massona and Estany Europa. La Massona was pretty quiet but yielded
Squacco Heron and our first
Night Heron of the visit. The drive across to Estany Europa produced some excellent views of
Golden Oriole and the pools and reedbeds held
Little Bittern and a few additions to our holiday tally including:
Kingfisher,
Red-crested Pochard and even a
Mute Swan.
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| Record shot of Bee-eaters at Estany Europa! |
As we headed back to the car for our journey back to the Villa a surprise in the form of a
Lesser-spotted Woodpecker and around a dozen or so
Bee-eaters delighted us while feeding over the grassland area.
