ANDALUCIA - 7 - DAY TOUR - DAY 5 - 29TH MAY 2014

SERRANIA DE RONDA - TEBA GORGE - LAGUNA DULCE - LAGUNA FUENTE DE PIEDRA - TEBA BOP OBSERVATORY - GAUCIN SWEET CHESTNUT WOODS

The weather returned to the usual gorgeous cloudless, blue sky today, all day! So you can assume that we had a great day out.

We started at 7:30am as we left Gaucin and drove to the mountains near Ronda, we had some unfinished business with a Rock Bunting. This bird had proven somewhat elusive over the last couple of days and today was no exception, we found Rock Sparrow, Blue Rock Thrush and Black Wheatear before the little blighted turned up. When it did show, it showed very well, we had tremendous close views from the car, thank you.

We then drove up passed Ronda and onto the Campillos road where we stopped to look at a Bonelli's Eagle eyrie, two young birds sat on the nest they were big enough to fledge, very nice all the same and we never saw an adult.

Near Teba we drove passed the gorge and stopped at the bird of prey observatory where we spent an hour looking up at a huge rock face hoping for a sighting of a Peregrine Falcon. The falcon didn't show but we enjoyed views of Griffon Vulture, Red-billed Chough, Jackdaws, Common Kestrel, Black Wheatear, Crag Martin, Alpine Swift and in the olive groves we saw Hoopoe, Greenfinch, Serin, Sardinian Warbler and Goldfinch.

Bath White

Laguna Dulce was covered in birds as usual, many Common Coot were with Great-crested, Little and Black-necked Grebes, we also saw Common Pochard and Red-crested Pochard, Purple Swamphen, Gull-billed Tern, Northern Lapwing, Greater Flamingo, Glossy Ibis, Little ringed 3Plover, Common Sandpiper, Hoopoe, Cetti's Warbler, Zitting Cisticola and lots of common species.

Lulworth Skipper

We drove around to the far side of the Laguna into arable farmland where we found a number of Crested Larks, Calandra Larks, a couple of Montagu's Harriers, Yellow Wagtails, Lesser Kestrel and we had good views of the Laguna. Several butterflies were on the wing as well as numerous dragonflies.

one of the six Greater Flamingos at Laguna Dulce

At Laguna Fuente de Piedra we were disappointed to see that most of the area had dried up, all of the pools around the visitor's centre had dried up and the main Laguna had shrunk dramatically. Thousands of Greater Flamingos had bred but they were quite far out. We did see Common Shelduck, Black-tailed Godwin, Avocet, Black-winged Stilt, Common Redshank and hundreds of Gull-billed Terns.

 a common species but beautiful all the same, European Goldfinch

We returned via Teba and again stopped off to view the cliffs, again we were thwarted with no sign of the Peregrine Falcon.

Our last birding was done on the sweet chestnut woods near Gaucin, the sun was still hot but it was sheltered in the trees. We saw Eurasian Nuthatch a few times also Short-toed Treecreeper for the first time, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Spotted Flycatcher and a few common species.

That was the end of another long day, I think we added about 10 species to our trip list with some excellent sightings included.

We all ate dinner sitting out i7n the local plaza, the sun was still strong and the air was very warm, summer has arrived in Spain I think.