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Red-throated Bee-eater

Red-throated Bee-eater
join us for a fantastic tour of The Gambia this November

Sunday, April 22, 2012

ANDALUCIA - 7 DAY TOUR – DAY 4 - APRIL 18TH


GAUCIN – EL ROCIO (COTO DONANA)  VIA – LAGUNA MEDINA – SANLUCAR/BONANZA SALT PANS AND TREBUJENA MARSHES.

Today we transferred from the mountains of Andalucía to the ‘flat-lands of Coto Donana. We set off at 8:30am and headed for the coast along the road to San Roque via Jimena, it was dull and overcast as we left Gaucin. Our first stop was at a railway bridge just passed Estacion de Jimena where we watched a dozen or so Lesser Kestrels as they attended their nests in the bridge wall, a few Jackdaws joined the kestrels in competition for their choice of nest sites.
Our next stop was an hour later as we approached Jerez, the Laguna Medina is always a good place to stop off when headed to Sevilla. The water had its usually crowd of Common Coot, Great-crested Grebe, Black-necked Grebe, Shoveler, Gadwall and Mallard. There was an exceptional number of both Common and Red-crested Pochard as well as Moorhen, Little Grebe and a few Yellow-legged Gulls. In the tamarisk and reedy scrub we found Great Reed and Reed Warblers and we had excellent sightings of both Cetti’s Warbler and Common Nightingale. Other birds seen were Yellow Wagtail, Zitting Cisticola, Corn Bunting, Stonechat, Garden Warbler, Blackcap and Serin.
After a lunch stop in a vent near Puerto Maria we set off for the salt pans at Bonanza, we made a quick stop at the river Rio Guadiaro near Sanlucar where we saw Little Egret, Yellow-legged Gull, Ruddy Turnstone and our first Lesser-black Backed Gull. The salt pans at Bonanza were a little disappointing but we did enjoy seeing Slender-billed Gull, Little tern, Whiskered Tern and hundreds of Avocet at close range. Despite there being a lack of good numbers of waders we did see: Dunlin, Curlew Sandpiper, Sanderling, Black-winged Stilt, Common Sandpiper, Black-tailed Godwit as well as Eurasian Spoonbill, Greater Flamingo, Glossy Ibis, Black Kite, Common Buzzard and Common Shelduck.

Next stop was the Laguna Tarelo where we struck lucky with a number of excellent species, the best of which was Marbled Duck (2), White-headed Duck (6), Night Heron, Squacco Heron, Red-crested  Pochard, Common Pochard, Shoveler, Gadwall and Cattle Egret (nesting colony).
LAGUNA TARELO - where we saw both Marbled Duck & Whie-headed Duck

The drive through Algaida Pine Woods was uneventful except for a fly-over Booted Eagle but the marshes at Trebujena produced a number of species the best of which was a single Red Kite, a single Great White Egret and a superb male Montagu’s Harrier.

We passed through Sevilla without a hitch and arrived at El Rocio at 6pm, a few journey birds added to our list included; Common Raven, Eurasian magpie, Azure-winged Magpie, many Corn Buntings and a dozen or so of Woodchat Shrikes.

We all checked into our hotel which overlooked the Laguna de Madre where a lot of birds were present; we left them for tomorrow and retired from birding for the day.

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