Our last full day of the trip and our last opportunity for birding and it all nearly ended in tears!! We awoke at 6am in readiness for a pre-breakfast walk but, disaster, it was pouring with rain. A real catastrophe as we had planned to go up on the cable car to the high peaks but thick low cloud and pouring rain meant that wasn't going to happen.
We ate breakfast at 7am and decided to drive into the mountains in the hope that the rain would ease off, but it didn't. We stopped at the village of Pembes to look for woodland species.This village is absolutely fascinating, it's just like walking back into the 17th - 18th century, every building, door, fence, window looks about 300-400 years old, what an amazing place. The village was full of birds because there are so many holes, broke rooves, nooks and crannies for them to nest in. We saw Barn Swallow, lots of Black Redstarts, even a couple of Common Redstarts, also Spotted Flycatcher, Robin, Great Tit and Blue Tit.
We spent a couple of hours walking along lanes s the rain eased off, but we just got soaked and eventually gave up and returned to the bus.
 |
| my little team of Snow Buntings - on the cleared track near the Mirador de Cable, Fuente De |
Next we decided to Visit Fuente De in the hope that the high peaks were free of cloud, but they were not, in fact the weather was even worse there. We stopped for a coffee and never saw the Telefercio (cable car) go up the mountain once. So we retreated back down the valley and stopped in Potes to buy lunch, we then drove out of town and into a country lane which took us back into the hills. We found an appropriate place to eat our lunch and whilst we were doing so the rain stopped, hooray!
For the next hour we walked around the vicinity of the bus and found several woodland species: Great Spotted Woodpecker, Wren, Jay, Song Thrush, Chaffinch and Serin. The weather continued to improve and some small patches of blue sky appeared. This encouraged us to return to Fuente De to try the cable car once again.
To our great joy the cable car was running but we could see that the cloud still shrouded the high peaks and it looked grim. However, not deterred we decided to give it a go and promptly paid our money and off we went. It was now 3pm so we didn't have much time at the top. The dense cloud was very thick and cold as we left the buildings at the Mirador de Cable at the top of the mountains, but the first thing we saw was an Alpine Accentor feeding just a couple of meters from the door. How cool was that? This warmed our enthusiasm so we set off for a walk in the mist. We hadn't gone too far we heard the song of the Water Pipit and during a small break in the cloud we located the bird, it even went up and performed its parachute display flight. next a Black Redstart began to sing and we soon found that too.
 |
| the scenery through the breaks in the cloud was stunning |
The breaks in the cloud got longer and longer and after about 30 minutes we had good clear views of up 500 meters. We could see the high peaks towering above us and wide snow-covered valleys below, it all looked very spectacular and it was literally breath-taking (it was very cold and the air was very thin).
 |
| Alpine Accentor |
After a walk of some 800 meters we arrived at a fork in the track and this was where I had seen Snow Finch on previous tours. We scanned the mountainside and the high peaks and discovered a Wallcreeper, this bird flew right down and landed very close, where it fed for a while before disappearing over a ridge. More Alpine Accentors appeared and we found Northern Wheatear, Rock Thrush, lots of Alpine Chough and a few Red-billed Chough.
Next came the exciting bit, we located a couple of birds down below us on the edge of a snow patch, we though that they were Snow Finches but they were lost out of sight. Then a flock of eight Snow Finches flew from our left and landed just 20 meters away to our right. They looked absolutely superb sitting on some boulders, there white wing patches showing up really well. They soon flew off giving another great flight display of colour. Fantastic, job done, we had seen all of the montane species in just 2 hours and now the sun was shining too!
 |
| Chamois |
Our walk back to the Teleferico was delayed by lots of stops to look at the birds but we also found a small group of Chamois, lots of brightly coloured moths that seemed to be emerging in their hundreds and we attracted a small flock of Alpine Choughs by throwing them biscuit crumbs. These birds were incredibly tame and even took food from my hand.
 |
| Alpine Chough |
We jumped back on the cable car for the ride down some 88 meters which only took 3 and half minutes, the views from the car were truly amazing.
It was now 6pm, we grabbed a quick coffee before heading back to our hotel for an 8pm dinner. So the day started as it was going to be a complete wash-out turned out to be fantastic in the end. It was a fitting and rewarding end to a very enjoyable tour. We had amassed just under 140 species in the 7 days despite losing two half days to rain and cloud.
 |
| the view from the cable car just before its 800 meter descent |
All the montane Specialites were seen well: Lammergiere, Wallcreeper, Citril Finch, Rock Thrush, Water Pipit, Ring Ouzel, Alpine Accentor, Snow Finch, Alpine and Red-billed Chough, Griffon and Egyptian Vulture, Red Kite and many more. It was a really great tour, why not join us next year?
No comments:
Post a Comment