Guadalhorce today

Another meeting of the Sunday faithful at the Guadalhorce ponds and again the faithful were rewarded, today with the record number of wader species so far this year, all 16 of 'em! Some 7 very bonny summer plumaged Knot were around, a fairly scarce species at the ponds, but fewer Curlew Sandpiper (11) and Dunlin (19). The female Avocet is sitting on 4 eggs and all we have to do now is wait.
Now is the time for chicks of the Black-winged Stilts and Kentish and Little Ringed Plovers to be rushing around on legs which always seem far too big for them and which elicit an aah from any females which happen to be watching them, today including 4 young Stilts whose parents were really into the we shall protect our chicks at all costs way of thinking, as their attacks on anything else within range showed, they really don't mess around and bore in with an intensity one associates with skuas or terns.
A female Pochard showed us 9 young ducklings in her flotilla and a Purple Swamphen (I prefer calling those Purple Boghens, swamp and bog must be just about synonymous) showed off. We're awaiting the sight of a juv. of one of those, that will be the day!
Other species of interest included an Osprey, a different bird we thought, Olivaceous Warbler, a single Alpine Swift which came in, swept over and was gone, a 1st summer Slender-billed Gull and a single 1st summer Cormorant which refuses to go north,as does the colour marked and flagged Dutch ringed Spoonbill.