Cantabrian capercaillie and Spain’s endangered birds in the Atlas

cantabrian caper

Birds across Spain face a mix of pressures, including climate change, pesticides, shrinking rural landscapes, the decline of traditional farming, poaching, power lines, wind farms, pollution, and intensive agriculture. Roughly a quarter of the country’s bird species are in risk categories, with nearly twenty listed as critically endangered.

The Atlas of Birds in Spain, published recently by SEO BirdLife, summarizes the status of 450 species recorded in the country. Four species are perilously close to disappearing: the Cantabrian capercaillie, the marble teal, the lesser shrike, and the kitty shrike. Two species are already gone from the wild: the Andalusian bullfinch and the common murre. [Cite: SEO BirdLife Atlas]”

Cantabrian capercaillie by Life+ Capercaillie / Biodiversity Foundation

cantabrian caper

The resident range of this emblematic bird has shrunk by around 36 percent in two decades, and its population has dropped by about 45 percent. Historically, it moved from Galicia through Cantabria and Palencia, but by 1974 its territory had been reduced to small pockets in northern Leon and western Asturias.

A 2023 study by experts from the Forest Stewardship Council, SEO BirdLife, and the Biodiversity Foundation found roughly 290 individuals remain, with two-thirds male and one-third female. A subsequent study revealed that 79.5 percent of capercaillie sightings lie in Castilla y Leon, concentrated in Alto Sil and Omaña, while roughly one-fifth occur on the Asturian slopes, notably in the Narcea Springs area, Degana, and Ibias. No signs of the bird were detected in the eastern Cantabrian range.

Ticks pardilla by LIFE cerceta pardilla

marble teal

Europe’s most endangered duck has seen its distribution contract by nearly 40 percent over the last twenty years. The atlas confirms its absence from the Region of Murcia and the Canary Islands, and it now persists mainly in a handful of Mediterranean wetlands within Andalusia and Valencia, with a single notable interior site at Tablas de Daimiel and a small breeding cluster in the Balearic Islands around Majorca.

Since the 2014 National Strategy for its conservation, a significant portion of breeding pairs has come from captive breeding programs released in Doñana, Valencia, and the Balearics.

Two examples of the Little Shrike by trenca.org

little shrike

Reproductive nuclei in Girona and Huesca disappeared in 2002 and 2010, and since then, breeding pairs have been limited to a radius of about 10 kilometers, with nesting currently limited to Lleida within the Segrià area in the southeast Ebro valley. After a steep decline in the early 2000s, the species has hovered between one and seven breeding pairs annually, with captive-hatched chicks released from 2009 onward. Since 2018, all returning breeders have originated from nearby wild nests or prior releases. Atlas notes that no repeat bandless samples were detected.

Gaviota tridactylate by Christoph Moning / eBird

kitty seagull

This species has always occupied a tiny range, limited to two coastal locations in A Coru aña since it first bred in the 1970s. Between 1998 and 2002 there were only two colonies, Sisargas and Cape Vilán islets. In recent years that area stopped producing new breeders, and breeding is now restricted to the Sisargas Islands only. The latest atlas warns that the baby gull population in Spain is on the edge of extinction if no changes occur, and since 2017 there has been no confirmed breeding in Spain.

The common murre family by Severine Methion / BDRI

common guillemot

Earlier breeding data show two Galicia colonies disappearing to the point of extinction within Spain. The Galician coast long hosted several breeding sites, with an estimated 3,000 individuals across at least eight colonies from A Coruña to Pontevedra. From the 1960s, these colonies experienced a sharp decline, likely driven by factors including nylon nets that were difficult for guillemots to detect in water, contributing to their collapse.

Two examples of the Andalusian torillo by CSIC

andalusian torillo

The species has not been reliably recorded in Spain for several years. Its range was mainly lowland Andalusia, particularly along the coastal belt in Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Málaga, and Granada, favoring grasslands and low shrubs in oceanic and thermo-Mediterranean zones. The most recent sightings were in the El Rocío area near Doñana in 1981, with occasional undocumented notes in Cádiz and Huelva since then. The environmental authorities classified the Andalusian bullfinch as extinct within Spain in 2018. Given the current status, conservation measures are urgently needed in the known population in Morocco and any potential offshoots in Algeria.

Atlas of Birds in the Breeding Season in Spain is available for reference through SEO BirdLife’s atlas resource. [Cite: Atlas of Birds in the Breeding Season in Spain]