An excellent birding day and my third day out with Ian & Sue who are staying with us for two weeks. Despite strong winds ll day we saw 82 species!!
We had decided to go to Tarifa to watch the spectacular raptor migration. It was very windy a harsh easterly was blowing and it got worse as we approached Tarifa later in the morning.
Our first stop was at the mouth of the river Palmones, the tide was receding fast and a good number of birds were on the sand-bar. We quickly noted Sandwich Tern (32), Yellow-legged Gull, Black headed Gull, Mediterranean Gull (8) and a nice selection of waders. At first we only saw Ringed Plover and Kentish Plover but gradually a lot more species of wader appeared: Grey Plover, Redshank, Greenshank, Whimbrel, Dunlin, Sanderling and a few Little Egrets. Deeper in the salt marsh we found White Stork, Grey Heron and a few Cattle Egrets.
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| Ringed Plover |
We moved nearer to Tarifa passing through Algeciras and as soon as we started to climb the hills surrounding Tarifa we noticed many raptors in the sky but the strong easterly wind prevented any serious attempt of a passage across to Morocco. At first there were small flocks of Black Kites, a few Honey Buzzards and the odd Griffon Vulture. We stopped at the raptor watch-point at Calzalla, the wind was so strong that we had to shelter behind the buildings there. Although the wind was now really strong a large number of birds were in the sky. The wind forced the birds to fly very low over the hills, Honey Buzzards were coming over the nearest ridge at a very low level giving some fantastic views. There were many Egyptian Vultures, a flock of 8 Black Storks and hundreds of Black Kites.
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| one of the 30+ Black kites on the beach |
The hide at los lances beach offered some shelter from the wind and we enjoyed some nice sightings of gulls, terns and waders, all the time we were there huge numbers of Black Kites were fighting against the wind as they made their way along the beach over the sea and high above us. At one point we counted over 500 birds in the sky at one time, many were also resting on the on beach and others were struggling to get ashore.
Next we visited La Janda where the wind was a little less of a problem, we could watch from the car as we drove along the main central track which is raised above the surrounding rice fields. Many Glossy Ibis were dotted about and about 500 White Storks were loafing along the banks, Cattle Egrets were present also in high numbers. We found several pools of open water where we watched Black-winged Stilts, Green, Common and Wood Sandpipers, Purple Heron, Grey Heron, Little Egret and a few Collared Pratincoles.
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| we saw 4 Oystercatchers 2 at Los Lances and 2 at Palmones |
Every few hundred meters we encountered a harrier quartering the fields, over 20 Marsh Harriers and fewer Montagu's were seen. A steady flow of Honey Buzzards drifted overhead and one huge flock of White Storks held at least 1200 birds!!
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| one of the feeder streams on La Janda |
Following the tracks around to Benalup we added a few more birds to the day list before we got back onto the main road and headed for Vejer where we made a quick coffee stop.
Barbate Marshes have been developed and now have a series of open lagoons, scrapes, islands and scrub. It is a perfect place for waders, gulls and terns to feed up or take a rest when the tide is high. The whole area was covered in birds, at least a 1000 waders sat out in one scrape. The flock was made up of mainly Ringed and Kentish Plovers with a few Dunlin, Little Stints, Sanderling and Redshanks thrown into the mix.
We searched the area for Stone Curlew and Collared Pratincole but neither were found, it may have been because of the strong wind.
It was now 4pm so we set off for home taking a nice leisurely drive with stops in Tarifa to look for Common Bubul (a pair had bred this year) and one stop for a well earned ice cream.
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