Curruca hortensis
Curruca hortensis
This species is distributed throughout the western and central Mediterranean, nesting in Europe only on the Iberian Peninsula, southern France, and western Italy (Keller et al., 2022; BirdLife International, 2024). It is an eminently Mediterranean species, distributed discontinuously across the peninsula and absent in areas of the Levante, Castilla-La Mancha, northern Andalusia, or the province of Badajoz (Gordo and Aymí in SEO/BirdLife, 2022).
It appears throughout the Madrid region, occupying areas of Mediterranean woodland with a preference for the mountain foothills, avoiding deforested or agricultural areas in the south and southeast (Díaz et al., 1994).
In the national park, three main areas have been identified where the species occurs in higher abundances. One is at the southern end of the park, coinciding with the shrubby slopes of Becerril and the clearings in groves and forest edges in the foothills of the Sierra de los Porrones; another is around the Morcuera pass, on the shrub-covered slopes combined with grassland north of Cuerda Larga; and the last is the area of Malagosto pass, in grassland zones with shrubby substrate.
The preferred habitat of the western Orphean warbler consists of shrub formations and open or patchy sclerophyllous forests, with a precipitation regime that is not too dry, such as dehesas, juniper groves, or open pine forests (Shirihai et al., 2001). It also uses dryland tree crops such as almond or olive groves (López-Iborra et al., 2015).
It occurs in the national park with significant densities in shrub areas and, to a lesser extent, around mixed forest stands with clearings and edge zones.
At the global scale, it is considered in the Least Concern category (LC; 2018). In Europe, it would also be classified in the same category (LC; 2018). In Spain, it is considered in the Least Concern category in the 2021 Red List.
The Catalogue of Threatened Species of the Community of Madrid (1992) classifies the species in the ‘Of Special Interest’ category.
BirdLife International 2024. IUCN Red List for birds. https://datazone.birdlife.org.
Díaz, M., Martí, R., Gómez-Manzaneque, Á. y Sánchez, A. 1994. Atlas de las aves nidificantes en Madrid. Agencia de Medio Ambiente y SEO/BirdLife. Madrid.
Keller, V., Herrando, S., Voříšek, P., Franch, M., Kipson, M., Milanesi, P., Martí, D., Antón, M., Klvaňová, A., Kalyakin, M. V. Bauer, H. Gr y Foppen, R. P. B. 2020. European Breeding Bird Atlas 2: Distribution, Abundance and Change. European Birds Census Council y Lynx Edicions. Barcelona.
López-Iborra, G. M., Bañuls Patiño, A., Zaragozí Llenes, A., Sala Bernabeu, J., Izquierdo Rosique, A., Martínez Pérez, J. E., Ramos Sánchez, J., Bañuls Patiño, D., Arroyo Morcillo, S., Sánchez Zapata, J. A., Campos Roig, B. y Reig Ferrer, A. 2015. Atlas de las aves nidificantes en la provincia de Alicante. Universidad d’Alacant. Alicante.
SEO/BirdLife (Molina, B., Nebreda, A., Muñoz, A. R., Seoane, J., Real, R., Bustamante, J. y Del Moral, J. C., eds.) 2022. III Atlas de las aves en época de reproducción en España. SEO/BirdLife. Madrid.
Shirihai, H., Gargallo, G. y Helbig, A. 2001. Sylvia warblers. Identification, taxonomy and phylogeny of the genus Sylvia. Christopher Helm. Londres.