On Monday 17th January a member of BBT and three volunteers took part in the second part of the Sacin Urbano, the urban bird survey organized by SEO. The most interesting bird was a hawfinch, a not totally unusual bird but not one that you will see every day. Unfortunately we didn`t manage to get a photo of it but as you can see Aitor Urrutia got some nice pictures of a redwing and bramblings. And on Monday 24th January they did the second part of the Sacin bird survey. In contrast to Sacin Urbano the Sacin is a longer survey which is mainly carried out in the countryside. In this case the volunteers walked from Arrieta to Meñaka noting down all the birds that they saw and heard. In the first survey the highlight was hearing the call of a nuthatch, a bird very much associated with native forest trees and unlikely to be heard in the pine-tree or eucalyptus plantations that are such a feature of Bizkaia. Finally, a member of BBT carried out the first of SEO`s three night bird surveys which are part of the Noctua programme. This involves going to five different places and listening for ten minutes in each station. In this case the three stations are in Maruri, Markaida, Emerando, Meñaka and Sollube. As often is the case in winter nothing was seen or heard in any of the stations. And of course it’s times like this in the cold of the night when bird surveying is not such fun!
