SEPTEMBER 4TH – ANDALUCIA 7 – DAY TOUR

DAY 2 - SAN PABLO – SAN ENRIQUE – PALMONES SALT MARSH

This was our first full day birding as late arrival on day 1 prevented anytime out in the field.
The light south/westerly winds continued and all the cloud that had lingered over the past few days had cleared. It was a bright and breeze morning and we took full advantage of that.

We set off at 8:30am from Gaucin and arrived at San Pablo some 20 minutes later making only a couple of brief stops to look at Short-toed Eagles and a couple of Common Buzzards. The track at San Pablo provided some great sightings as usual with many Montagu’s Harriers stealing the show. A very obliging Booted Eagle sat on a wire and called continuously whilst up to 9 Lesser Kestrels hunted on the wing above the hillside.

The numerous Stonechats were joined by a good number of Bee-eaters, Zitting Cisticolas, Serins, Greenfinches, Willow Warbler and Woodchat Shrikes along the fence-lines and more raptors appeared in the sky. We saw several Common Ravens, 9 Giffon Vultures and an increasing number of Short-toed Eagles. We stayed until 11am but the heat of the day eventually drove us to seek shelter.

Before setting off to our next destination we diverted to a hillside not far away as we could see a large group of Griffon Vultures circling very low over the ground. This meant one thing, a dead animal! This was confirmed by a local farmer who told that a dead cow was being attended by 50 vultures just by the roadside, but by the time we arrived the vultures had left the carcass (a horse not a cow) and they were sitting 20 meters away in the grass. We couldn’t understand why they had left their meal but they never returned to it whilst we were there. We did find a couple more species for our list whilst we waited as a Red Kite and two Egyptian Vultures circled high above us with some Girrfon Vultures.

We arrived at San Enrique woods at 1pm so we parked in the shade of a eucalyptus tree and ate our picnic lunch, but we were soon on the search for more species. We added Spotted Flycatcher, Tree Sparrow, Jay, Grey Heron and Garden Warbler outside the wood and Short-toed Treecreeper, Pied Flycatcher and Blue Tit whilst we were in the woods. A brief watch over the river Guadiaro from the woods didn’t provide much except for Common Kingfisher. We did see a good number of Dragonflies which included Red Veined Darter, Lesser Emperor and Epaulette Skimmer.

The last part of the day was spent at Palmones where went spent a good couple of hours watching over the river and salt marsh from the lovely promenade. A good variety of waders were recorded along with Glossy Ibis, Mediterranean Gull, Little, Common and Sandwich Terns, over 100 White Storks and an Osprey.

We drove back to Gaucin via Jimena de la Frontera where we stopped to have another look at the vulture fest, but they were still off their food. back in Gaucin we enjoyed a lovely home cooked dinner, courtesy of Dawn, we completed our checklist over a nice cup of coffee.