The highlight from today’s trip to Villaviciosa were 3 Spoonbills in the Porreo del Salín area.
Bird sightings:
Spoonbill, Little Egret, Grey Heron, Greenshank, Redshank, Common Sandpiper, Common Snipe, Spotless Starling, Crow, Greenfinch, Linnet, Wheatear, Redstart, Zitting Cisticola, Stonechat, Goldfinch, Curlew, Magpie, Buzzard, Black Kite, Kestrel, Sedge Warbler, Collared Dove, Wood Pigeon, Blackbird, Pied Wagtail, Robin.
Belinda.
It has been a game of patience with the camera trap over the past 6 weeks. I’ve positioned the camera at a friend’s hotel and farm – Posada del Valle. We used several locations around the farm and surrounding woodland with varying degrees of success.
The sensitivity of the camera is impressive, even picking out mice moving through long grass. However, this advantage comes at a price, 30 clips of grass and branches blowing in the wind can be very frustrating!
I’m very pleased to catch sight of the genet again and the wild boar wallow appears well established and I’m very hopeful for future recording there.
We spotted a single adult otter today. An exciting moment although we quickly lost sight of it, despite pacing up and down the river path for over an hour afterwards. Not the greatest photos especially with rubbish clinging to the branches, a consequence of the flooding in February.
It was a classic case of right time, right place when a flock of Glossy Ibis landed in a field adjacent to where we were watching a group of cattle egret. Beautiful plumage.
The water rail is a difficult bird to watch. It lives amongst the reeds on wetland sites and I’ve certainly heard more than I have ever seen. They make a distinctive call like a piglet grunting and squealing. I sat for over an hour with 3 water rails in view. They all seemed to possess they’re own territory and walked their patch with a jerking motion in search of food. I was happy to get the photos below with the bird out in the open rather than skulking around in the reedbed.
We saw the otter(s) on 5 ocassions this weekend. A mother and two almost fully grown cubs have been very visible. We are now pondering if these 2 cubs are the same very young cubs we saw 12 months ago. It seems just about possible but at probably 15 months old they should definitely be ready to leave the mother.
I can’t imagine this opportunity will come along very often, although I hope it does. The water was clear and I was standing on a bridge directly above the otter. After a little manipultation using Photoshop I’m reasonably happy with these 2 shots.
The weather is terrible, so I have used the time to revisit some past otter encounters over the previous 2 years and reorganise my otter ‘set’ on flickr. There are some I am very happy with, some adequate to the document the sighting and others there just for exciting memories.
In 2011 we were fortunate to see the otter on 31 separate occasions. Looking back I’m now wondering if the lost otter cub from last January is now the young otter we are seeing so frequently now…..
I hope you enjoy them. – http://www.flickr.com/photos/john_shackleton/sets/72157622787665997/
The stills from this encounter can be viewed on flickr here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/john_shackleton/sets/72157622787665997/
The first post of the year brings some exciting clips from the camera trap.
After I experimented with various angles in an attempt to avoid the wind triggering the sensor, I positioned the camera around an old tree stump in the wooded area close to the mountains. I left it in this location for 3 weeks, although I swapped the memory card 4 times to check any recordings. I eagerly await some front view clips of the marten and genet. Hope you enjoy it.