16th Dec 1988 - Embalse del Ebro

Yesterday was more or less a write‑off: the morning was taken up with trying to collect mail that still had not arrived and the afternoon with find­ing what seemed to be the only open campsite in Cantabria ‑ we were in need of a shower again. The only items of natural history note were black redstarts on the coast in the morning. The males were very black with very conspicuous white wing patches and under­tail coverts ‑ more like the southern Iberian race ‑ Phoenicurus ochuros alter­rimus.

Sea watching in calm but cold weather at Cabo Mayor this morning is disappointing, so we move back up into the mountains. A collection of twenty or so red kites, numerous ravens, jackdaws and black-headed gulls and a few buzzards and crows near the town of Reinosa suggest the location of rubbish dump. We manage to get off the main road (the second stopping place we have seen in 50 km) and watch the kites for half an hour or so.

The Ebro is one of the largest and most important rivers in Spain. The Romans called it Iberus, from which the peninsular takes the name Iberia. It rises in the Cordillera Cantabrica about 40 km from the north coast and meanders along the inland edge of these mountains and the Pyrenees to drain into the Mediterranean via the vast Ebro Delta. It has been dammed some ten kilometres from the source to form a reservoir (embalse in spanish) twenty by eight kilometres, the largest area of fresh water in Cantabria, with twelve villages lying beneath it.

The reservoir is at too high an altitude to attract large numbers of breeding or wintering birds but is a useful stop‑over point for migrants. It provides roosting places for the black‑headed gulls from the rubbish tip and also holds small numbers of mallard, coot, gadwall, teal, tufted duck and great-crested grebes. A peregrine flies in and watches proceedings from a mudbank.

The weather is noticeably colder and we see a snow plough ready for action on the road to Reinosa.
Dec 17

The countryside around the Embalse del Ebro is rolling rather than mountainous but, being mostly above 600 metres, it looks harsh and hungry. In those fields which are cultivated the soil looks peaty and probably quite deep in places, yet most of the area is covered with heather and bracken with some scrub and the occasional small plant­ation. There are rocky out-crops and small ravines and plenty of power lines.

We stop a few kilometres east of the Emb­alse and wait for birds to appear. They are slow in coming ‑ a griffon, a couple of ravens, crows, etc. A small bird appears in a bush some 150 metres away and looks like a large pale bullfinch; it appears to have a pinkish breast, dark cap, grey back, white rump and dark tail. It comes closer and morphs into a great grey shrike as the markings and shape become clearer ‑ the white "rump" is actually white tips to the tertials. This is the southern race ‑ generally darker than the one we saw in Belgium with a pinkish breast and belly.

The shrike moves closer in stages, stopping on a fence post or twig, looking around intently for a few minutes then perhaps swooping down on something on its way to the next post. It ignores passing cars but does not think much of the lorries. When we leave it has done a circle back to the bush where we first saw it.