A black stork in this area? Could be...

JIMENA This photo was kindly sent in by Val Jubb with the following comment: "Took this photo on Wednesday night.  We think it is a Black Stork  -  very rare in these parts  -  it was sitting on the rocks left of our house and rested there for a good while  -  long enough to get the photo and read up about it! With you articles about birdwatching just now, I thought some people might be interested to see this." Click on the photo to enlarge. If some of you experts out there can confirm the presence of a black stork here, we would love to know!

EuroBird Watch in Spain

The World Bird Day is to be celebrated all over the world. Agreed. As we posted just below, Gibraltar is organizing itself for European Birdwatch, and so is Spain. In fact SEO/BirdLife has a whole host of activities throughout the country, a programme for which you can see here in Spanish. The focus this year is at Doñana National Park, one of Europe's main migration routes. At a more local level, things appear to be very quiet, at least from what we can gather from the Fundación Migres and Cigüeña Negra websites. If you know of any collective activity taking place this weekend, please let us know (click on 'comments' below).

European birdwatch in Gibraltar

GIBRALTAR (Panorama) Millions of migrating birds will leave Europe in these weeks flying to their wintering places in Africa. BirdLife International invites people in Europe to take the opportunity on the weekend of October 1 and 2, 2011, (This weekend!) to discover the fascinating world of bird migration. The European Birdwatch is an annual event comprising hundreds of nationally organised activities. On these observation posts the number of birds and participating people are counted and reported via the national centres to the European centre. In the last years around 60,000 people took part in 34 countries and close to three million birds were observed on this single weekend. In 2011 the event is coordinated by SVS/BirdLife Switzerland, which is acting as the European Centre to process these data. Locally, GONHS (Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society) will once again be hosting EuroBirdwatch, as Gibraltar BirdLife Partner organisation. Programme below.>>>

Illegal bird catchers caught in Jimena

JIMENA The Guardia Civil's Seprona unit based in Castellar, on patrol by the Guadiaro River in the municipality of Jimena, last week caught three men hunting with illegal nets forbidden by law. These, called redes de tiro in Spanish, are spread out over an area of trees or on open ground (photo) to catch finches, linnets and other smaller birds (which are often served up, also illegally, as pajaritos fritos, or fried little birds). The birds caught in this operation were released and the men reported for hunting illegally (a common practice in the area, incidentally) and for possession of forbidden hunting material. (This item also on CampoPulse)