10/5/08

Fuente de Piedra today

This morning I made a quick escape to Fuente de Piedra, something I had been planning for a week or more. It was devilish cold there at 8.30, a distinct change on recent mornings, and with an unpleasant westerly wind. I failed to make contact with either the male Garganey of yesterday or with the female Ferruginous Duck, although with regard to the latter a Dutch birder I talked with reckoned that it showed various hybrid characteristics. There still isn't much water in the lake and not many flamingos, although there is a small colony and several groups were displaying. I made no contact with any Lesser Flamingo, although that means nothing with the distance that one is from the colony. There was a nice little selection of waders, the best being several Little Stints and 5 Temminck's Stints, all this in the area around the centre and mirador. Surprisingly, very few of the Curlew Sandpipers showed any sign of summer plumage, whereas the majority of those down at the Guadalhorce are in virtually full plumage. Different populations?
On the non wader side, a Great Reed Warbler graced the morning with his totally unappealing swee-swee, churr-churr song but showed very well. 5 Black Terns hawked over the Laguneta del Pueblo, the lake near the information centre. Further round, I also made contact, a distant sighting admittedly, with a Black-shouldered Kite.

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