A mixed bag of fortunes today and compared to yesterday a bit of an anti-climax. The weather was lovely and a bit cooler due to light overcast clouding.
It was the third and final day with Roly and Helen, they had seen most of their target species but a few were still missing so we tried to fill the gaps.
Our first stop was the chestnut woods just above Gaucin, it was a bright, very still, morning ideal for warbler watching. We were after the Iberian Chiffchaff but we never got a sniff of one, not a single note of song or contact call, disappointing. We got great views of Crested Tit, Eurasian Nuthatch, Bonelli's Warbler and we did hear European Robin and Wren.
Next we went to the track near San Pablo to seek out the rare Rufous Bush Robin, we could hardly believe when one sat out singing as we pulled up, we watched it for a while but we were driven off by clouds of flies and biting midges. Further along the track we found another target species the Tawny Pit, it showed well on the telephone wires. Other goodies included Sardinian Warbler, Melodious Warbler, lots of Bee-eaters and an odd looking Common Buzzard, it had a pure white head! Our first Short-toed Eagle sat nicely on a pylon for us to get great 'scope views, White Storks did the same and another Common Buzzard posed on a post.
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| Rufous Bush Robin in full song |
The Lesser Kestrel colony at the railway bridge near San Martin was exciting to watch, adult birds were bringing food to the full grown chicks, mainly grasshoppers, they were soon devoured by the hungry siblings.
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| male adult Lesser Kestrel with a grasshopper in its talons |
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| you can just make out the Lesser Kestrel chick in the nest hole |
PALMONES was almost as bad as last time, but there were a few waders and two lovely Slender-billed Gulls to watch. Kentish and Ringedlovers joined a single Oystercatcher and a Black-headed Gull on the sand bar and a single Greater Flamingo flew into the lagoon behind them.
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| Slender-billed Gull - adult |
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| you can just make out two of them in this picture |
After a coffee and tapas stop we visited Soto Grande nature reserve where we added Common Coot, Common Moorhen and a Purple Swamphen to our list but there were very few gulls about. A short sea-watch produced a small number of Northern Gannets and a single Cory's Shearwater, that one was well appreciated by Roly.
Lastly we drove to the Rio Manilva to look for Cirl Bunting a bird that had escaped our attention throughout this mini-tour. It still evaded our observation, well you can't win them all, can you?
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| he Rio Manilva - it is fed by a natural spring which carries rich minerals giving the water a milky blue quality |
We ended there having had some success and some failures, we ended up with over 120 species for the 3 days with some really good sightings on the list.
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