various, weekend 23-24 August

An interesting weekend with news of migrants in the Guadalhorce and Almería, an interesting plumage in Little Ringed Plovers which I shall put in a separate blog after this, a light-weight scopoe for travelling, and one little chap with a huge ego.

Migrants From Almería, Raimundo Martín (in naturand) informs of a Marsh Sandpiper seen this week in the Salinas de Cerrillos (Roquetas - El Ejido ) (observer I. Sarabia) and also of the presence on 23 August of 8 Dotterel in Las Almoladeras (Cabo de Gata) (observers I. Sarabia & Rai).
I have been down at the Guadalhorce ponds twice, Saturday and Sunday, yesterday in the company of Joan Carles Fernández Ordoñez from Cataluña, today the usual Sunday gang with the exception of Federico. Plenty of movement, with the usual waders - Dunlin, Redshank, Greenshank, Curlew Sands and so on- both days, including a splendid Grey Plover still in full breeding plumage.
There have been several Little Terns around and on 23rd Antonio Miguel recorded around 30 Black Terns and also some Whiskered.
On 23rd, passerine records included the first migrant Common Redstart (a 1stW male) and a Pied Flycatcher, while this morning a Marbled Teal flew in whilst I was testing out the small Minox 50ED telescope I have acquired.

Minox 50 ED scope I got this recently in England as a small, light (c.650 grms) scope for travel along with a lightweight tripod when taking the heavier Zeiss would be unnecessary. It's obviously not the Zeiss, but the little 13-30x zoom performs quite well, we tested it on the Marbled Teal in quite grey, overcast conditions. It's considerably cheaper than the similar 50mm Nikon. In fact, at the Bird Fair I had suggested to the head of product development for Zeiss that they consider producing one, angled body with a choice of either a 15-28/30x zoom or a fixed wide-angle 27/28x eyepiece, with a ceiling price of around 500€. We'll see what they do, if anything!

Little chap, big ideas!
Joan Carles and I found this little chap on the right this Saturday, one of this year's brood obviously, staggering across a path as though he owned it, although how he hadn't been flattened by large feet and / or a bicycle is a miracle! He even had the gall to threaten Joan with wide open mouth when he picked him up to photograph and move him! Lovely, isn't he?

PS: The photos are mine, all mine, I'm getting better! And by request from Joan Carles, the finger that the chameleon is sitting on is his!