Today I collected Susan and Brian Anderson from their holiday finca in Valle de Abdalajis near El Chorro in Andalucia. What a truly beautiful place it was too! Stunning mountainous landscapes and steep river valleys.
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| Susan and Brian with Valle de Abdalajis in the background |
It was a lovely day with wall to wall sunshine and a nice breeze. We started birding just out of town on the road to Alora and we started listing with Corn Buntings, Stonechats, Greenfinches and Red-rumped Swallows. After driving through a busy Alora we stopped on bridge near the dam just below El Chorro where we found Grey Wagtail, Common Sandpiper, Little Egret and Brian and I saw a Common Kingfisher.
The fantastic sight of the steep ravine at El Chorro is made even more interesting by the Camino del Rey which is by far the world's most scariest footpath - have a look at this YouTube video:
Whilst we there a film crew from Malta were walking the path!!
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| The camino del Rey with a group of people shown as tiny dots |
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| The group at half zoom on the telescope *30 |
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| The group at 60 times zoom |
The bird life around the gorge was fantastic too with hundreds of Alpine Swifts dashing and screaming about.
Another stop along the gorge produced Chaffinch, Sardinian Warbler and Coal Tit.
By the time we reaches the laguna Dulce it was almost lunchtime but we scanned the lake for an hour before we ate. The water was covered in birds, we listed about 30 species on or over the water it was was wonderful. About a dozen Ferruginous Ducks were seen quite close to the hide along with about 100 White-headed Ducks. All three local grebes were there with Common Coot (over 1,000), Common Moorhen, Purple Swamphen and after a long time searching we found a Red-knobbed Coot. this bird was wearing a white collar (no it wasn't priest) with the number 26H written on it. Red-knobbed Coots have been reared and released into the wild with white collars, the collars are for protection, the theory is that hunters have been asked not to shoot the coot with the collar!! A Squacco Heron was a nice suprise but the shear number of bird was truly impressive.
Anyway, after lunch we drove into the fields behind the laguna and spent a couple of hours enjoying even more bird life. Several Whinchats were listed with lots of small flocks of Yellow Wagtails and the odd Northern Wheatear. At least 6 Western Marsh Harriers were out on the wing and at a smaller laguna we saw Northern Lapwing, Green Sandpiper, Little-ringed Plover and many of the birds seen on the main laguna.
On our back towards El Chorro we stopped at the raptor observatory at Teba where we spent a nice time in the afternoon sunshine watching Griffon Vultures a variety of raptors passing very high overhead. We saw a single Honey Buzzard, 4-5 Lesser Kestrels, a single Montagu's Harrier and a couple of Booted Eagles.
Susan was overjoyed with her sightings (she was the birder of the two) we saw over 70 species and most of them were lifers for her.
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