OCTOBER 5TH - DAY TOUR

TARIFA RAPTOR WATCH POINT (CAZALLA) - LOS LANCES BEACH - LA JANDA

This was Jill and Noel's last days birding with me and I let them control the pace and direction of the day - which meant several coffee stops and a long lunch - hey, ho you can't bird all the time.

We set off early in order to get to tarifa around 9am so that we could watch the start of the raptor migration. However when we got to Cazalla watch point quite a strong, cool, breeze had developed. We watched for an hour and enjoyed seeing many birds pass over. A flock of some 15 Black Storks got us off the mark then a trickle of Black Kites, Booted Eagles, Sparrowhawks, Short Toed Eagles and Griffon Vultures passed by. Due to the nature and direction of the winds the birds were not passing directly over us and it was difficult holding your bins up in the winds.

We were driven away by the cool temperature and made a brief visit to Los Lances beach, where we found Audouin's Gull, Sandwich Terns, Yellow-legged and Lesser Black-backed Gulls in good numbers. A large flock of Sanderling and a few Ringed, Kentish Plovers and Dunlin dotted the beach.

On the grass meadows behind the beach we found Northern Wheatear and a small flock of brightly coloured Yellow Wagtails and all the time a trickle of Short-toed and Booted Eagles passed overhead.

After a coffee stop we made it to La Janda where the wind persisted and made it better to stay in the car and bird-watch than to try to get out. A couple of large flocks of Spanish Sparrows fed in the rice fields and a couple of Whinchats sat on the fence lines. We saw 400+ Glossy Ibis and nearly 1000 White Stroks in the fields with hundreds of Cattle and Little Egrets. Several Marsh Harriers quartered the fields and a single female Montagu's Harrier came very close to the car.

We spent a fair amount of time looking for large raptors on the road to Benalup but it really was too windy. So we set off for Tarifa and took a late lunch in a nice restaurant on the quayside, mixed sea-food platter went down very well, thank you Jill and Noel.

Well that was the end of our birding for the week, we amassed a respectable 151 species with highlight being the Eagle Owl found by Jill on the 4th.