Birding

Transitions

February 9, 2025 by Clive Finlayson 2 Comments

This is a time of year when we see, in the northern hemisphere, almost daily changes in birds as they prepare for the breeding season. Down here, in the southernmost extreme of Europe, some of these changes start sooner than further north. Having a look at our wetlands this week gave me good examples of what is happening.

Spoonbills on the move

On the one hand birds are arriving from the south, sometimes in spectacular flocks. In my previous articles I’ve highlighted hirundines and Great Spotted Cuckoos (Clamator glandarius). Others are arriving too and its not just the White Storks (Ciconia ciconia) that arrive in large flocks.

Flight of Spoonbills
Spoonbills feeding busily

Although some remain here throughout the winter, numbers of Spoonbills (Platalea leucorodia) are augmented by birds coming in from the south, some in spectacular breeding plumage. Black-winged Stilts (Himantopus himantopus) are also showing up in places where they haven’t been all winter, almost certainly arrivals from North Africa.

Black-winged Stilts feeding at last light
Glossy Ibises in tight formation

Others are simply gathering in very large numbers, socializing and entering the rituals that birds have prior to breeding. Because of the tight flocks that they form, Glossy Ibises (Plegadis falcinellus) stand out. More discreet, but beautiful are the ducks which are now pairing up, among them Northern Shovelers (Spatula clypeata).

Pair of Northern Shovelers

I have a soft spot for gulls. Mediterranean Gulls (Ichthyaetus melanocephalus) are now moulting into breeding plumage, some adults now having almost complete black hoods which contrast beautifully with their red bills.

Mediterranean Gulls changing into breeding plumage
Adult Audouin’s Gull

Adult Audouin’s Gulls (Icthyaetus audouinii) are now in pristine plumage as they start returning to their breeding colonies. February is their month. Great Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo), too, are getting into breeding plumage.

Great Cormorant

Other gulls will leave us soon and they are slightly behind in their plumage transitions. Lesser black-backed Gulls (Larus fuscus) are still largely in winter plumage, some beginning to lose the streaking on their heads. Others are rarer down here, at the edge of the winter range, and we will soon see them depart for the north.

Lesser black-backed Gulls

A Common Gull (Larus canus) was among my sightings this week.

Common Gull

So all is changing as some birds arrive from the south, others leave northwards, yet others are already starting the nuptial preliminaries for another year.

Written by Clive Finlayson
Growing up in Gibraltar, it is impossible not to notice large birds of prey, in the thousands, overhead. That, and his father’s influence, got Clive hooked on birds from a very young age. His passion for birds took him eventually to the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at Oxford University where he read for a DPhil, working with swifts and pallid swifts. Publishing papers, articles and books on birds aside, Clive is also a keen bird photographer. He started as a poor student with an old Zenit camera and a 400 mm lens; nowadays he works with a Nikon mirrorless system. Although his back garden is Gibraltar and the Strait of Gibraltar, Clive has an intimate knowledge of Iberian birds but his work also takes him much further afield, from Canada to Japan to Australia. He is Director of the Gibraltar National Museum. Clive's beat is "Avian Survivors", the title of one of his books in which he describes the birds of the Palaearctic as survivors that pulled through a number of ice ages to reach us today.