Day Trips - Friday Jan 14th - La Janda & Palmones

Tony, Paul and I, all from the village set off for another excursion to La Janda after we had such a good day on Wednesday 12th.



Eurasian Spoonbills feeding in the salt marsh at Palmones

Tony (Left) and Paul scanning the rice fields at La Janda


The weather was its usual fantastic self, bright blue sky, wall to wall sunshine and a lovely temperature. We parked at the top of the entrance track and scanned the flooded rice fields with our telescopes. A lone Eurasian Spoonbill stood to our right and was surrounded by Lapwings, Green Sandpipers (15), Little Egrets and a couple of White Storks. Passerines included Linnets, Corn Buntings, Meadow Pipits, Stonechats and a small flock of Reed Buntings.


As we ventured further down the track we found a Common Buzzard (sitting on a John Deere tractor), Common Kestrel, Marsh Harrier and many Common Cranes flying too and fro across the distant fields.


Common Buzzard




We drove down to the central track and parked at the ramp where we spent an hour so just enjoy the sheer number of birds and of course the warm sunshine. We spent and extra half an hour here because Tony had left the car lights on and flattened the battery!!! After some pushing and shoving the car wouldn't start so we had to wait until someone drove passed so that we could use jumps leads to get the car started, however, we were birding and in good sunshine so hey ho! no problem and a guy came along after 30 minutes.



The Central Track - it is a raised track and offer great views across La Janda


Common Crane











Paul found the first of his 3 lifers, Calandra Lark, from our vantage point on the central track.


We scanned a large area of low lying land, this comprised of grazing grassland, arable, rice fields and all were surrounded by dykes and ditches holding reeds and rushes.








We found not one but three! Spanish imperial Eagles, all juveniles, one of which caught some prey and then sat on a large post to eat it. The other two were further away but all gave us good views throughout the day. We also added Hen Harrier (2 females and a male), Golden Plover, Skylarks, Zitting Cisticola, Spanish Sparrow, Water Pipit and a group of six Purple Swamphens.

Reed Bunting

Purple Swamphen

We spent the rest of the time driving along the central track where we found lots more of everything and added Black Stork, Great White Egret and Common Sandpiper to the day list.

We then turned onto a new, unexplored track that circled the grazing fields to the north of la Janda and after 15km we ended back at Facinas. Along this track we saw another 2 Spanish Imperial Eagles (probably of the 3 seen earlier), lots of Common Buzzards (12), a Southern Grey Shrike, Ravens, Lesser kestrel and many Corn Bunting Buntings.

We left the area and decided to pop into Palmones on the way back to Gaucin. It was a good choice as we saw many bird there. The glorious late afternoon sun warmed our backs as we scoped the Marshes where we found Osprey (2), Spoonbill (6), Redshank, Grey Plover, Ringed Plover, Kentish Plover, Whimbrel, Curlew (2), Sanderling, Dunlin, Sandwich Tern, L B B Gull, Yellow Legged Gull and Black headed Gull. There were also many Grey Herons, White Storks, Cormorants and Little Egrets, a lovely end to another superb day.

Gibraltar seen from the promenade at Palomones