We set off once again in the dark at 7:30am carrying our breakfast with us, picnic style. After traveling down to the coast at Matalascanas we turned towards Huelva and after another 1/2 an hour we arrived on the outskirts of this industrial coastal town. It was still quite dark so we sat and ate our breakfast, the morning sunrise was a beauty to behold, such a deep crimson red which faded to many shades of pink as it got lighter.
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| Laguna de los Palos first thing this morning |
The laguna Primera de los Palos lies alongside a huge oil and gas refinery a bit like the beauty and the beast. It was quite quiet, not many birds were present as the banks and islands were totally overgrown. We saw Northern Shoveler, lots of Gadwall, Teal and Mallard. Then we noticed a few terns fishing over the water, they turned out to be Caspian Terns, there were 5 of them, fantastic. The other new sighting for some of us was a Purple Swamphen it fed on the far bank along with Common Coot, Moorhen as a Common Kingfisher flew by.
The drive through the port of Huelva and round to the Marismas del O'Diel was uneventful but as soon as we arrived at the Laguna Calatilla we found a good selection of species. The water was extremely low so not many birds were present. But we find: Common Snipe, Black-tailed Godwit and many of the duck species listed above. A few Greater Flamingos fed in the water and Little Grebes fed nearby. An usual sighting gave us some excitement as Mike pointed out an oddly coloured starling in the distance. It most certainly looked like a Rosy Starling but on closer inspection it was a leucistic bird, what a shame!
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| the dodgy looking Starling |
Across the road we scanned over the salt pans but most birds were very distant, however, we did find both Slender-billed and Audouin's Gulls as well as our first Shelduck of the trip. We also found Redshank, Black-winged Stilt, Common Ringed Plover and lots more Greater Flamingos.
Our next stop was at bridge which spanned a feeder river, the tide was extremely low so a lot of mud was exposed. On the muddy banks we found: Whimbrel, Eurasian Curlew, Grey Plover, Greenshank, Common Sandpiper, Dunlin and Ruddy Turnstone. In the distance we saw Common Buzzard and Western Marsh Harrier.
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| Black-tailed Godwit |
Over the next two hours we drove some 20 kilometers down towards the tip of this huge nature reserve, the salt marsh narrowed to a few meters as we approached the final few kilometers, it was very much like Spurn as this spit of land jutted out into the Atlantic Ocean. We found lots of species and in addition to those mentioned above we found Bar-tailed Godwit, Red Knot, Oystercatcher, Caspian Tern, Northern Wheatear, Common Whitethroat, Zitting Cisticola, Crested Lark and White Stork.
It was on the way back that we found the most wanted Stone Curlew, a flock of some 15 birds was seen on a bank. We also found Little Stint to add to our wader list.
El Portil was our next destination and it proved very productive which was not quite unexpected. The water level was still quite high and lots of birds were feeding in or near the water. We added a few species to our daily tally: Black-necked Grebe, Little Grebe, Red-crested and Common Pochard as well as Green Sandpiper and Eurasian Wigeon, But the best was a group of marsh terns which was feeding over the water, We identified 4 Black Terns and they were joined by a White-winged Black Tern, quite a find in Spain and it was well appreciated by the group.
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| Black-necked Grebe at Laguna El Portil |
The heath and marsh was the last venue of our day, but before we ventured into the heath we sat and ate our late lunch. A few Stonechats, Sardinian Warblers and the odd sighting of the Dartford Warbler preceded our best bird of the day.....the Bluethroat. We had several sightings but one particular male sat out for us and gave a superb showing.
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| Audouin's Gull |
Our journey back was punctuated with a couple of stops, one for coffee and one for a quick look at the laguna de los Palos. We thought that more may have arrived but apart from gulls nothing new had arrived, so we set off back to the hotel.
Our day's birding ended at 6pm and also signalled the ending of our visit to Coto Donana, tomorrow we will be setting off to Extremadura for the next 3 nights.
We leave Donana with 141 species on our list with about 40 more to see, watch this space!
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