WELCOME TO THE BLOG OF WINGSPAN BIRD TOURS



ALL NEWS, BIRD SIGHTINGS AND TOUR UPDATES ARE FOUND HERE



FURTHER DETAILS OF FUTURE TRIPS CAN BE FOUND ON OUR MAIN WEBSITE:-



Tuesday, July 5, 2011

JULY 5TH - TRACK NEAR SAN PABLO

I joined Paul from the village on this early morning birding sortie to the nearby village of San Pablo. Our mission was to discover if the 'known' track near San Pablo was a reliable site for Rufous Bush Robin.

VIEWS ALONG THE TRACK





We set off from Gaucin at 7am and drove the short distance to San Pablo and after passing through the village we turned onto the track. Birds were everywhere, many newly fledged youngsters were in sight. We found many Woodchat Shrikes, at least 3 family parties were quite near to us, lots of Melodious Warbler were also flitting about; adults were feeding youngsters along the hedgerows. We also had several sightings of Olivaceous Warbler, this was a new bird for us at this site! a great find.

A POOR PICTURE OF AN OLIVACEOUS WARBLER



JUVENILE WOODCHAT SHRIKE


It wasn't long before we heard a song that we were unfamilar with, we soon located a RUFOUS BUSH ROBIN, it was perched on a fence and gave us good, but short, views as it uttered short bursts of song. It was also carrying food (proof that males can multi-task) but, before we could get any pictures, it flew off to a small plantation.

Encouraged by this we searched with renewed vigour and over the next couple of hours we must have had 10 sightings. We found two separate family parties, each having at least 2 youngsters. Eventually we got very close to them.

RUFOUS BUSH ROBIN - SHOWING THE UNDERTAIL PATTERN


RUFOUS BUSH ROBIN - VERY CONFIDING ALONG A FENCE LINE




In the meantime we also saw a plethora of other species: Zitting Cisticola, Blackcap, Linnet, Corn Bunting, Goldfinch, Common Whitethroat, Cetti's Warbler, Olivaceous Warbler, Melodious Warbler, Red-rumped Swallow, Bee-eater, Woodchat Shrike, Raven, Short-toed Eagle, White Stork, Greenfinch, Collared Dove, Spotless Starling, House Sparrow, Blackbird, Stonechat, Barn swallow, House Martin, Common Swift, Common Buzzard and some that I have forgotten! Its amazing really, we only walked a couple of hundred meters and we saw nearly 30 species, wow, what a great place Spain is for wildlife!

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED - THE RUFOUS BUSH ROBIN SITE IS RELIABLE

No comments:

Post a Comment