Wintering Wallcreeper Site in Northern Spain 

by Duncan Dine

For those birders travelling across the Bay of Biscay this winter, there is the added attraction of the possibility of an easily accessible wintering Wallcreeper. 

Late on Monday 29th September, having arrived off the Portsmouth to Bilbao ferry that morning, I checked into the Parador (Hotel) at Fuente De in the Picos de Europa mountains. The following day, I intended to take the cable car behind the hotel to the mountain top to look for the Wallcreepers that can be found there.  

The cable car runs from 10am daily, and as I left the hotel to catch it, I was amazed to find a Wallcreeper on the front of the hotel, below the bedroom windows.  It was extremely confiding and a very close approach could be made, it being disturbed only by the starting of a car engine.  I watched it for the next hour as it used the rough stone hotel walls just like a cliff face, and it had great success catching a variety of insects, the bulk of which were moths (attracted by the lights of the hotel at night?) that it had flushed. It caught many of these in the manner of a flycatcher.  On a couple of occasions it gave a drawn-out whistling call that was very audible, and was a good way of locating it.  With the target bird located so quickly, it gave me time to find some of the other specialities of the area; Alpine Accentor, Rock Bunting, both Choughs and Griffon Vulture, all of which were easily found in the immediate area. 

Over the next two days the Wallcreeper could easily be found within a five minute search.  It is entirely possible that it could over winter here, and it’s well worth a detour. Fuente De is reached via the town of Potes, off the N621, approximately 2½ hours’ drive west of the port of Bilbao (even closer from Santander).