Alfredo Valenzuela I Sevilla, (EFE) from all over Spain and Europe.
An “extraordinary rarity” ornithologists consider the visit of this specimen. From the group of alcids -superficially similar to penguins, although they belong to another family- never seen in the Iberian Peninsula. And it is the third time that it has been detected in the bioregion called the Western Palearctic. (Europe, North Africa, the Near East and North of the Arabian Peninsula and almost all of Asia).
As Javier Elorriaga, an ornithological guide from the Birding the Estrait company, which operates from Tarifa (Cádiz), explained to Efe, this specimen of the ancient murrelet was detected on May 24. On the beach of the breakwater or the Juan Carlos I Dam by the Dutch ornithologist Rolland Bekkers. Who unable to identify him uploaded the photos he took of him to social networks. And “immediately the alarm went off and the image quickly went viral.”
The following day, May 25, several Andalusian fans showed up on the beach and saw the specimen. With what the presence of the discovery in social networks and WhatsApp groups -systems used by amateur ornithologists to communicate- multiplied. So that on successive days they have arrived from almost all Spanish regions, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Finland and the United Kingdom.
“Yesterday I was still there”
“Yesterday it was still there,” said Elorriaga, who has described the ancient murrelet as a very active, highly mobile species. And that it dives a lot to feed on small fish. So much so that it is capable of moving more than a hundred meters underwater. And usually lives and flies over the sea. And it comes ashore for little more than to nest, which it does in a hole at the foot of a tree.
This specimen, whose sex is unknown, is an adult and, like those of its species, it is white, black and gray in color -with a white tip on its bill, which is very striking. Its back is a gray that seems worn, hence the origin of its name. Whoever described it for the first time evoked the color of an old man’s shawl.
It nests in Alaska, on islands far from the mainland and its migrations include the West coast of the USA to California. That of Canada, the Bering Sea to Japan and the eastern coast of China. And to explain that it has reached Huelva there are two theories, one that suggests that the melting of the Arctic has allowed it to pass. Being a bird that flies over water and not over ice, and the other that was due to meteorological phenomena.
According to this second theory, strong winds have been able to move it into the interior of the continent. And, from Canadian lake to lake, reaching the East coast. Once there, mingle with the razorbill, a similar species of which several specimens have arrived this year on the Andalusian coast.
Tangled in a fisherman’s line
Their presence in Huelva, according to Elorriaga, is so rare that it can be compared to that of the snowy owl specimens that, in November 2021, arrived in Asturias and Cantabria, after having landed on a ship on the high seas and staying in the first port. to which it arrived
A few days after being seen in Huelva, Elorriaga has recounted, the bird got entangled in a fisherman’s line and one of the amateur ornithologists who were watching it, Jorge García Cuevas, jumped into the water, swam to the place of entanglement, He asked the fisherman not to pull the line at that moment and managed to free it, after which the bird quickly recovered.
Interest in the ancient murrelet has been able to increase in these months because the last season of the television program directed by the naturalist David Attenborough has shown how this species nests and how only two days after hatching the chicks are called by their parents, who call them. they feed in the high seas, so that they swim and dive and return to the nest after this exercise.
The ornithologist Rafael García Costales counts the visits caused by this ornithological rarity, although he warns that he only counts fans who have recorded having seen it on social networks, not those who have not been able to see it or have not expressed it in their networks, so the actual number must be much higher.
According to this calculation, the day after it was detected, 26 fans already attended, which multiplied to 127 in the first week, up to 143 until the end of May and last Thursday there were 226. EFE