Elche Natural Park to Welcome New Babies

The Ministry of the Environment, Water, Infrastructures and Territory has verified that five specimens of spoonbill have reproduced for the first time in the Valencian Community, specifically in the El Hondo Natural Park between Elche and Crevillente, which, until now, this species of aquatic bird had only been observed as a bird of passage and in small numbers.

The general director of the Natural and Animal Environment, Raúl Mérida, has highlighted the “importance” of the fact that this breeding species has chosen the El Hondo Natural Park to nest and has pointed out that this “speaks of the good health enjoyed by this protected space, in which the coexistence between traditional uses and conservation stands out”.

Mérida has also pointed out that another example of this “good health” is the case of the Albufera de València Natural Park, which “has broken a record for wintering waterfowl this year according to the censuses that have been carried out in this space since the 1980s”.

Likewise, technical personnel from the Generalitat Wildlife Service have reported the “increase in the Valencian Community of the colony of birds coming from the south of France thanks to an abundance of trophic resources, adequate levels of flooding and the presence of important colonies of herons that have favoured the settlement and breeding of this species in the park”.

For now, the spoonbill has been a rare species in the Valencian Community only as a wintering bird or bird of passage, but with no prior record of its nesting. Towards the end of the 1990s, it had been observed occasionally in the Salinas de Santa Pola Natural Park.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the number of spoonbills had rarely exceeded a dozen birds and only a couple of spoonbill band readings had been obtained, both from the Netherlands.

One of them has been observed for nine consecutive winters in the Salinas de Santa Pola, the regional administration has specified, which has pointed out that from that moment on, the number of specimens possibly linked to a breeding colony in the Camargue (south of France) has increased.

In October 2021, 57 tagged birds were observed, 50 in the Salinas de Santa Pola and seven in El Hondo. Of these, 52 were born in the Camargue and five in the Netherlands.

Other provenances that have been recorded are a ringed specimen in Denmark and another in Croatia, and a young specimen marked in the Odiel marshes (Huelva). These three birds have been observed in El Hondo.

The increase in spoonbills in the south of Alicante has occurred gradually, the Generalitat has added. In this way, it has indicated that there were 292 spoonbills recorded in 2020 in the Santa Pola salt flats and 327 birds in 2021.

In the last decade, the presence of the spoonbill in the El Hondo Natural Park has increased due to the abundance of fish in this wetland, as well as birds during the summer periods.