The Black Crowned Night Heron and the Squacco Heron - Delta Ebre, Spain

AND ... the weirdest birds I've ever seen - A small flock of the Black Crowned Night Heron were roosting in a small shrubby tree near Casa de Fusta restaurant and the Squacco Heron was feeding in a waterlogged field further along the road.  

Osprey - Delta Ebre, Spain

That moment when you see your first Osprey take off from a telegraph pole and it's carrying its kill!!!

BUT ... You're in the campervan, it's moving, your camera battery is in the charger on the side & your camera is in the cupboard!

In the space of a few seconds, we stopped the van; I scrambled for the camera; pulled the block with all the chargers so hard all iPads & phones went flying leaving the camera battery on the floor in front of me; pushed battery into camera as I simultaneously leapt out of van door taking the flyscreen with me; my camera was on single point focus & Aperture priority which was all wrong for this moving bird, but the bird was already flying away from me & gaining speed, so I had to go for it.

I won't win an award but I have a memorable shot which quite nicely represents the chaos that surrounds my enthusiastic attempts at photographing these challenging creatures!

Bluethroat - Delta Ebre, Spain

When we first arrived on the Delta Ebre, we parked up in a free Camperstop at Casa de Fusta restaurant, overlooking the largest lagoon on the Delta.

With cuppa in hand we sat and watched the Flamingos, Herons and Egrets coming and going around us.

I noticed a small Robin-like bird flit in and out of the reeds to feed on the edge of a muddy puddle very close to our campervan. In my eagerness to photograph anything that moved, I took a few shots which initially didn't look very impressive. Then I enlarged them and got really, really excited - it turned out to be a Bluethroat! Not only a very special bird, hardly seen in the UK, but it's been the only Bluethroat we've seen here all week too!

The Zitting Cisticola, Delta del Ebro, Spain

Don't you just love the name Zitting Cisticola?!  

I remember reading this name on another Birder's blog before we went to Spain, but I didn't have any idea what it was and to my shame didn't even look it up in the bird book before we went.

But on an evening walk along a quiet track by the North Coast of the Delta, when the sun cast its golden glow over the reeds, I noticed a small bird 'bouncing' out of the reeds yo-yo style.  After a few of these bounces I tried to make judgements when to expect the next one and roughly where it was going to land - not easy and I missed quite a few opportunities. I tried to catch him in the air, but the ones I got were impossibly blurred as he was soooo quick. 

All the time I just kept thinking to myself 'is this the Zitting Cisticola?' - not sure why but I thought it seemed appropriate.

Then I got lucky or quicker or smarter or ... well just lucky.  And I give you the Zitting Cisticola!

Red Throated Black Cap, Cases D'Alcanar, Spain

Before you reach for your rare birds guide, I don't think a Red Throated Black Cap actually exists. Well it kind of does and it doesn't.

I'd just sat down by the campervan with my breakfast when Deric alerted me to a bird flitting in a nearby bush. The bush had tall orangey/red poker-like flowers.  I grabbed my camera and snapped away whilst Deric kept asking me 'what is it?'  

My instinctive thought was a female or juvenile Black Cap - it had all the characteristics, but it failed on one significant feature - a red throat.  

My mind was in a bit of a spin.  I was trying to take some good shots but at the same time eager to grab the bird book and see if we'd stumbled on a rarity.  

Eventually the bird moved on and I had enough record shots to help with identification.  We took it in turns to paw through the pages of our European bird guide but it was a fruitless search.  I slammed the book shut and pronounced, with pride, that we had found a new species "A female Red Throated Black Cap" I concluded.

Then a rare moment of clarity descended on my muddled brain.

"It really is a red throated Black Cap" I shouted to Deric.

"It's been feeding inside the long, orangey/red, trumpet-like flowers and getting the pollen all over it's throat.  It's dyed its throat red!"

Sardinian Warbler, Les Cases D'Alcanar, Spain

After an exhilarating week on the Delta del Ebro, surrounded by exciting and varied birdlife, we needed a hot shower and electricity - to do all the things that require electricity, well mainly involving a hairdryer!

We found a quiet little campsite in a small fishing port South of the Delta, in Les Cases D'Alcanar, one of the few campsites open in January.  It was a little oasis of colour and fragrance.  The pitches were set amongst fragrant trees and flowering shrubs, so the birdlife was quite exotic with plenty of Serins singing from the tops of Palms, the Hoopoo scratching around in the sand under pine trees and a variety of other birds flitting in and out of the low hedges to taunt me.

This particularly confiding Sardinian Warbler was very obliging.

My super Kingfisher moment in Delta Ebre, Spain

Four months I've waited for the Kingfisher shot I longed for to grace the picture frame I received as a gift from friends.

I already had a few reasonable shots of this colourful bird, taken by the Exeter Canal. But the birds had perched in the reeds on the other side of the canal, a little too far away and the background looked too cluttered.  I had enjoyed watching them on my home patch, all the same.

My super Kingfisher moment came when I was in a bird hide alongside a lagoon on the Delta Ebre watching Flamingos in the distance.  My camera was resting on the window shelf and was switched on ready to go, I leaned down to look at the Flamingos through the viewfinder and this beautiful Kingfisher just dropped down onto a lone reed, right in front of the hide!  

The evening sun shone directly through the doorway behind me, highlighting the Kingfisher's gorgeous blue/green feathers down his back.  

I had just a couple of seconds to fire a few shots as a Spanish girl rushed into the hide when she noticed something happening. She ran straight towards the window, frightening the beautiful bird which disappeared as quickly as he'd appeared.

Serin, Cases D'Alcanar, Spain

This is one alarm call I enjoyed waking up to!

This vibrant little Serin chose to sit on the gnarled branch of this Palm Tree EVERY morning throughout our stay in Cases D'Alcanar.  And he sang ... and sang ... and sang continuously throughout much of the day.

To me, it was a lovely, if somewhat repetitive, exotic sound.  A symbol of warm sunny days.