Introduction

In our cycle tours around Europe, and later in Mexico's Yucatan, we always noticed the birds around us, particularly those on phone or power lines by the roads we were following. We would shoot these with our little camera and pop them into the cycling blog. Particularly when we started to visit Yucatan more often, we spotted a lot more birds, and we got ourselves onto a couple of guided boat birding tours, at Rio Lagartos and at Celestun. But still we were very casual about it, and quite ignorant, one might say. The evidence for this was in the number of times we would spot an interesting bird on a wire, and put the photo in the blog with the question of what was this. And so many times our readers would have to respond with the same darn bird name as had come up before - usually Tropical Mockingbird or Great Kiskadee. 

To try to head off this embarrassing situation, we concocted the idea of keeping a catalog of the birds (bird photos) that had been identified, so we could check before bugging our readers yet again. That then led us into the idea of having either a life list of birds spotted, or at least a list of birds in the current year. And once we were recording all sorts of birds, we developed the ambition of finding and recording more, and then of identifying them ourselves, using field guides and then computer searches. So suddenly we seemed to be "birders", an occupation we had not previously thought about or necessarily much valued.

In line with this new vocation, we planned some stops in our European cycle tour just ended, with birding in mind. In the Camargue of France, there was Pont de Gau, a spot with really a lot of flamingos. And at Valencia, we "cheated" by visiting the aviary and bird river that are part of the city aquarium. Finally, there was the delta where the Ebro River reaches the sea. At the Ebro we signed up with a guide, Al Henderson, who expertly took us around for a whole day. This was really swell, as we learned a lot about how to spot and photograph the birds, and also got to see some for which Al already knew the favourite haunts, and/or called them in with recorded bird song.

Steve learns with Ebro Delta guide Al Henderson, by his side.

Al's spotting scope gives an incredibly clear look at distant birds.

Bluethroat - Al called this in with a recording from Merlin and a Bluetooth speaker.

So many flamingos where the Ebro meets the sea

Going around with Al reinforced the recognition that an experienced and trained person has a much better chance of finding something of interest than a pair of greenhorns, and worse, greenhorns rolling by on bikes. If we get the right guide in Costa Rica, we expect we will see really a lot. We also understand that some of the places where we will stay have feeders that will attract lots of birds. That presents the possibility of getting nice shots from the poolside, which sadly seems just our speed!