Yesterday’s blog gave you some good reasons to flock to the Coto Donana in spring – wonderful weather and great birds. But now there is another reason and that is the Donana Bird Fair which this year took place on Friday-Sunday last week at the Dehesa de Abajo which is in the NE corner of Donana but handy for many of the good spots.
And let’s just say that the site itself is a great spot for birding – we saw Crested Coot and White-headed Duck here as well as a whole bunch of more familiar species. And Iberian Lynx are regularly seen too. So, Rutland Water, this isn’t!
Whereas our Bird Fair is well into young adulthood, having started in 1989, this was the Donana Bird Fair’s second year. Last year it had 2,500 visitors over four days and this year its charismatic organiser, Beltran de Ceballos told me he hoped for a similar number in just three days. It was certainly busy on the Saturday and Sunday.
At the moment, there is one very large marquee which is mostly filled with local tour guides and regional tourism organisations, and a few smaller ones, but over time this will surely grow. SEO and optics firms are present already and you can train your telescope or camera across the flower-rich fields towards the laguna and its Red-Crested Pochard, Crested Coot, Black-necked Grebes and Flamingos.
There is a gift shop with some classy things to buy, a bar for that cold beer or Coke and you can also eat there too. There was an excellent photographic exhibition whilst we were present – so it’s a place where you can hide from the heat of the middle of the day and still enjoy wildlife at any time of year.
The Donana Bird Fair is a good place to meet old Spanish birding friends from SEO (the Spanish Birdlife partner) and I’m always surprised by the fact that one meets British birders almost everywhere – I guess we’d stay at home more if we hadn’t wiped out so many birds from our own country (but don’t get me started on that subject!).
At the moment, the Donana Bird Fair clearly works well for local people from the Seville region and will pull in keen professionals from further afield in Spain.
If I were birding in Donana then I might be slightly loathe to give up precious birding time to visit a Bird Fair, but here are some reasons why I might: if the weather’s bad!, if I can see good birds at the site (you can!), if I can shelter from the heat of the day and get something to eat and drink (you can!), if I can get up-to-date information about where to go and what to see on the rest of my visit (an area to develop), if there are interesting talks to go to (there are some – another area to develop).
The thing that would pull in lots of visitors, I think, would be nothing to do with birds. It would be to do with Lynxes. Everywhere you go in Donana these days you see posters of Lynx and roadsigns asking you please not to run over Lynx, and webcams to captive Lynx in the breeding programme and rather too often, people telling you that there was a Lynx seen here this morning/just now/only yesterday. If Lynx-friendly evening or night-time tours could be organised with a good chance of seeing Lynx then the ‘Bird’ Fair would be a good place to have Lynx talks, Lynx memorabilia and Lynx guides available. I don’t know a birder who wouldn’t rather see a Lynx than a Lesser Short-toed Lark, and would be prepared to pay quite a lot of money for what would be a privilege.
I did say I’d tell you who we were, didn’t I? We were: a scribbler for the second-best birders’ magazine in the UK, the doyen and grand old man of ‘The’ Bird Fair, our gorgeous guide and driver, a Scottish snapper, the person who does all the hard work at the finest UK birding magazine and a guy with a West Country accent.
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You may deem me to be “a scribbler for the second-best birders’ magazine in the UK”, Mark, but I would be surprised if you’ve read much of my work. I did show you a piece of mine whilst we were in Spain, which you said you enjoyed. If you had read my work, you would know that a strong conservation theme runs through it. If you do indeed feel my writing to be worthless, then you would also be saying that highlighting worldwide conservation issues is to boot.
Ed – I like your writing very much and if I gave the impression that I didn’t then it was inadvertent. I know several excellent writers who would call themselves scribblers.
I’d be happy to call myself a scribbler too.
Mark – I’m very pleased to hear it! My Chambers dictionary has ‘Scribbler’ down as a derogatory term for a worthless author.
“I guess we’d stay at home more if we hadn’t wiped out so many birds from our own country”
I’m sure the comment was in part tongue in cheek but I think it is fair to say that the UK is not uniquely bad when it comes to nature conservation. Clearly, the ornithological riches of the Coto Donana owe much to its geographical situation, not simply a more enlightened Spanish attitude to conservation.
Spain does have some amazing birds (not to mention the lynxes, bears and other fabulous wildlife) but it also has its own conservation problems. The Guadalquivir itself is stressed by excessive abstraction for irrigation of strawberries and tomatoes and in the past has also been subject to catastrophic pollution from toxic mine tailings. We have read here of the threat to Spanish vultures from the licensing of diclofenac and also of the excessive and indiscriminate shooting of birds that occurs in many southern European countries. It is also worth mentioning the fact that a huge proportion of Spain’s coastline has been ruined so that we northern Europeans can go and fry ourselves in the sun once or twice a year. I believe that Spain is also a strong advocate of maintaining CAP budgets and resisting proposals for increased ‘greening’ of CAP subsidies.
The fact that such a lot of charismatic wildlife persists in Spain is due in part to the wisdom of the foresighted people who set up the Donana National Park and other protected areas (and, as in other parts of the world, Brits have played an important pioneering role in promoting the conservation of Spain’s wildlife) but also owes a great deal to the fact that Spain is very sparsely populated compared to the UK and also has extensive areas of mountain and other land that are not easily farmed in an intensive way or developed.
Sadly, the truth is that nature is more or less up against the wall everywhere and needs all of the help it can get.
i love birding in Spain and yet it makes me a little whistful; so many areas, bird wise, remind me of the countryside of my youth. Large numbers of farmland and other birds. And yet Spanish birders tell me how concerned they are that things are not as they were years ago! What are we doing to our natural world? Has anyone heard any politician refer to the natural world over the last few weeks? Even the Greens seem to forget it.
We saw Iberian Lynx within 1hr of our arrival in Donana in late January and several long close views in Sierra Morena. Almost too easy (!) but we had great guides. Yes Mark, it is a real privilege and I hope no birder would turn down the chance to see this fabulous animal.
Perhaps we need to make it even more clear that there is money/business in the natural world although I hate to play that game. This bird fair sounds a good start and perhaps your group has sown a few ideas for future expansion.
Good to see that you have discovered the little jewel that is Dehesa de Abajo Mark. And Beltran is a real dynamic character is he not?
Spent a happy week with him there last year, with a group helping survey the waders, waterfowl and white stork colony and doing some much-needed clean-up work around and about the reserve – birding with a purpose and all that.
Hope you took the opportunity to sit down and enjoy a leisurely Spanish lunch with him, it’s quite an experience.
Did you notice an abundance of corvids, raptors and songbirds in harmony Keith?