Our final day of the tour found us north of Ronda on another very hot day, it reached 39C in the afternoon.
We set off from Gaucin at 8:30am and drove the short distance to the chestnut woodlands along the Ronda road. We spent an hour or so looking for woodland species but it was very quiet. We hit a small purple patch just before we left when a flock of Long-tailed Tits passed by then a Crested Tit flock was seen in a conifer along with a Eurasian Nuthatch and a Great Spotted Woodpecker.
Next we spent a couple of hours at the Natural Park in the Sierras de las Nieves where we concentrated on looking for butterflies, despite the very dry conditions we found a good few on the wing. Lavender was in flower and this seemed to attract the most species: Spanish Chalk Hill Blue, Sage Skipper, Adonis Blue, Brown Argus, Small Blue, Clouded Yellow and Small Copper were all feeding on it. We also saw: Striped Grayling, Small White, Cleopatra, Tree Grayling, Dusky Heath, Small Heath and Southern Gatekeeper. We ate our picnic lunch in the shade of a pinsapo pine before moving on.
We passed through Ronda and on towards Campillos, a brief stop was made at a Bonelli's Eagle nest site but no birds were seen at all.
Laguna Dulce at Campillos was covered in birds, this was because all the other lagoons for miles around have dried up! There was around 300 Greater Flamingo's as well as good numbers of: Little Grebe, Black-necked Grebe, Common Coot, Moorhen, Little Egret, Cattle Egret, Grey heron, Purple Swamphen, Mallard, Gadwall, White Headed Duck and Common Pochard. On the shoreline we found quite a few waders: Black-winged Stilts, Avocets, Green and Common Sandpipers and from the hide we saw a single Hoopoe and a Crested Lark.
Flying above the water were about 1,000 Common Swifts with lesser numbers of Pallid Swifts , Alpine Swifts, Barn Swallows, House Martins and Sand Martins. A couple of Black Headed Gulls, a family party of Gull Billed Terns and a single Whiskered Tern all joined Cormorant onto our day list.
We drove round to the back of the laguna and approached the water's edge on foot so that we could get better views of the waders, there we added Black-tailed Godwit, Little Stint, Ruff, Redshank and a Yellow Wagtail to our list. We also noticed a single Shoveler dabbling in the mud as we were watching it a ROLLER flew down from abush and took a drink. Great sighting, another ROLLER for the trip list.
It was not 3pm so we set off towards to Malaga Airport so that Mike could catch a plane home, but first we stopped for a coffee in Ardales along the way. Whilst we sat outside in the shade we logged a couple Griffon Vultures drifting over and another couple of HONEY BUZZARDS!!! This was further evidence that the autumn migration was underway.
I dropped Mike off at 5pm at the airport and rove home arriving at 7pm, tour over, a good list amassed in the hottest week of the year so far!! We recorded over 130 species of birds and over 25 species of butterfly.
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