Our best day yet with the weather, a cloudless sky with very light winds. We set off for Huelva after breakfast but we made a quick stop to look at the El Roico laguna to look for the Gull-billed Terns seen last night. The terns were not there but we did find a Common Teal and we had a great sighting of 9 Little Gulls that flew over the laguna, they did not stay but we all had good views of them.
Just outside of Huelva we stopped to look at the laguna de los Palos, this small body of water usually holds a good selection of birds. Today was a little disappointing but we did see Gadwall, Shoveler, Common and Red-crested Pochard, Purple Swamphen, Squacco Heron, Pruple Heron and lots of Common Coots.
We then drove through the port of Huelva and round to the Marismas de O'diel, this 'island' runs some 30km and is parallel to the Huelva shoreline. The whoile marsh is superb with hundreds of hectares
of salt marsh, open lagoons, salt pans, beach, stone pine woodland and shingle banks. We started at the small lagoon at the Calatilla Restaurant. There we had excellent views of a Red-knobbed Coot, the bird swam in front of us just a few meters out. Then a Little Bittern flew across the pool, it was the one and only sighting of this species. Many other birds were on the water and included: Spoonbill, Greater Flamingo, Gadwall, Shoveler, Common Pochard, Little Grebe, Black-winged Stilts and Common Sandpiper.
Over the next 2 hours we drove towards the 'tip' of the island and stopped several times to look at thousands of waders. The tide was low and huge areas of mud were exposed where we found several new species for the trip. Grey Plover, Eurasian Curlew, Bar-tailed Godwit, Oystercatcher and Stone Curlew were all new. This raised our total of wader species recorded during the trip to an impressive 25.
A large flock of Little Terns numbering over 170 was really nice to see and an Ortolan Bunting was a terrific find on the way out of the reserve.
We ate our picnic lunch sitting on a grassy bank in warm sunlight and then at 1pm we set off for the long journey back to Gaucin.
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