After a lot of overnight rain we awoke to light drizzle and thick low cloud. So we changed our plans and decided not to go into the mountains and headed off to the coast.
We drove down to Jimena and onto San Roque noting a Little Owl, Spotless Starling, Common Buzzard and Goldfinches along the way. At San Roque we stopped to watch many White Storks on their nests before driving onto Palmones. The tide was high at Palomones so the sand bar at the mouth of the River Palmones was covered in birds. Many species of waders sat on the sand or fed in the water: Oystercatcher, Ruddy Turnstone, Red Knot, Grey Plover, Dunlin, Sanderling, Bar-tailed Godwit, Redshank, Greenshank and Ringed Plover.
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| the boys at La Janda |
Gulls and terns consisted of Black-headed, Mediterranean and Yellow-legged Gulls and Sandwich Terns. Great Cormorant, Grey hero, Little Egret and an Osprey made up the rest of the list.
From the car park to the hide at Los Lances we watched several species, a large flock of starlings held both species, Common and Spotless. We also found large flocks of Corn Buntings and Calandra larks with smaller numbers of Zitting Cisticola, Crested Lark and Yellow Wagtails.
The tidal waters had flooded the beach at Los Lances which drove a lot of birds very close to the hide so Grey Plover, Sanderling, Ringed Plover and Dunlin were seen very well. A little further afield we saw a juvenile Greater Flamingo, a couple of Oystercatchers, a flock of Audouin's Gulls and hundreds of Yellow-legged Gulls and fewer Lesser Black-backed Gulls.
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| Audouin's Gull |
On the way back to the car we saw a Peregrine Falcon and a Common Kestrel. We then drove to La Janda but it was raining quite hard so we drove on passed and went to the golf complex at Montenmedio and after some searching we found a couple of Bald Ibis with lots of Jackdaws. We also passed a pool with hundreds of Cattle Egrets and Glossy Ibis.
Then we drove back to La janda here we spent two hours or so driving the tracks and searching the rice fields for new species. IT WAS FANTASTIC! There were thousands of birds in the area, everywhere you looked there were raptors in the sky and large flocks of birds. Over 1000 Glossy Ibis fed in the rice fields, the same number of Cattle Egret were presents. Starlings were in similar numbers but there were also large numbers of Little Egrets, White Storks and Shoveler. A good number of waders were also on show with Common Snipe, Ruff, Wood Sandpiper, Green Sandpiper, Black-winged Stilts and Northern Lapwings. Huge numbers of Goldfinches fed in the cropped sunflower fields with over 500 Wood Pigeons.
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| Northern Wheatear |
We drove over to the back of the fields to watch raptors and we certainly saw some. A falcon flew across the front of bus, I called Hobby but as it flew over to a pylon and landed, we scoped it and found it to be a male Peregrine, oops! Then we had a superb half an hour as, first, a Spanish Imperial Eagle drifted over and soon after we found a Bonelli's Eagle. After watching Red-legged partridge, Common Pheasant, Yellow Wagtails (50+), Whinchat and Northern Wheatear we then had Booted Eagle and several Common Kestrels fly passed.
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| Tawny Pipit |
The fun wasn't over because after a coffee stop in Vejer we stopped at Barbate marshes where we enjoyed our last couple of hours watching lots of species. We added Tawny Pipit to our list and saw many waders, including many Kentish Plover which had been missing from our list, we also saw lots of gulls and terns. This concluded a lovely day out, the weather wasn't perfect but the birds were.
On the way back home we stopped at the Mirador de Elstrecho to look at Morocco and whilst doing this we did find a Hobby! Lastly we stopped to photograph the White Storks at San Roque and found 3 more Booted Eagles. Our last birds of the day were a number of Griffon vultures over Jimena and a flock of a dozen or so of Common Ravens near San Pablo.
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