Having arrived early for a first meeting with Steve West, author of ‘Where the birds are in NE Spain’, I sat quietly in the car listening to the Linnets and White Wagtails fussing around a small watering hole along an approach road to the Alfés timoneda.

‘If Pin-tailed Sandgrouse flock to watering holes so routinely', I mused, 'how come they were so hard to pin down in a habitat famous for being dry?’ and made a note to ask Steve, who’d emigrated to Lleida over eighteen years ago.

Meanwhile, as the car purred its way into the sunrise, passing Crested Lark and Corn Bunting, I decided to take advantage of some fortuitous spare time and digiscope the restless but ever-closer Calandra Larks (see below) a species that, though initially wary, do seem to tolerate invaders rather quickly and they began posing and singing for me on any low bush they could get their claws on.

It’s not that I’m a bad photographer honestly but, of course, the minute I had set up the scope, screwed on the adaptor, attached the camera, turned it on, focussed and rested my finger on the shutter-release, they teasingly flitted down into the timoneda, a habitat incidentally made up of low aromatic bushes (predominantly thyme, hence its name).

Exactly on time, Steve arrived and we immediately began discussing the threat from expanding fruit farming and irrigation to this unique habitat and especially to one of its rarer guests, the Dupont’s Lark.

It’s at this time of year that they begin their distinctive nasal mating song and we wondered if Lleida had heard the last of it, such is the seriousness of the threat posed.  As it turned out, we’d have to wait for another day to find out though; perhaps we came a little too early in the year.  Perhaps.

For the next couple of hours we chatted and moaned our way through Thekla Lark, Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, Red-billed Chough, Red-legged Partridge, Little Owl, Black Redstart and a small group of flushed Little Bustard.

And a fleeting visit to the reservoir at Utxesa added Yellow-legged Gull, Marsh Harrier, Penduline Tits and Southern Grey Shrike before we parted company.

I was disappointed only that I hadn’t spied my first Great Spotted Cuckoo of the year, as they do arrive as early as February, but on the way out I was treated to a final close look at the feeding flock of Pin-tailed Sandgrouse.  Apparently, there are enough watering holes around to still make them difficult to find. 

And, today at least, the wind certainly makes them difficult to photograph (see below).  Well that’s my excuse anyway.