10 January, Fuente de Piedra

At last! I got out birding today and a very welcome outing it was too. I met Bob Wright (see his blog at http://birdingaxarquia.blogspot.com/),his wife Jenny and his brother-in-law Chris at Fuente de Piedra at 1030 (more or less).

A beautiful morning, but cold it was, as the frost on the grass and the large areas of ice on the fresh water with the Shovelers and Coots standing around looking miserable testified. But, as I was wrapped up like an onion and there was no wind and some very feeble sunshine which would hardly have warmed the cockles of anyone's heart, I was at least warm.

On the main lake, there were very few flamingos, just one flock of perhaps 250-300 birds and with nothing smaller standing in amongst them Neither were they feeling very frisky as I saw no display, which one usually does at this time of year. No head stretching and extending the wings en masse as they do when feeling the hormones running. All very sedate. There was a nice spread out flock of feeding Little Stints,some 40 birds I reckoned, and a couple of Dunlins thrown in for goo measure whilst a few Black-winged Stilts were around. A flock of Lapwings stood huddled up and not looking too overjoyed with life, and later we watched a solitary bird which really was very smart. A single Shelduck looked rather out of place and lost as it shoveled through the mud.

We had good views of a Southern Grey Shrike and I heard Skylarks fly over before Bob & Co. arrived. Anothe illiterate Hoopoe was seen (according to the field guides they are supposed to be in Africa now but some are seen as far north as Madrid even).

We had a look at the smaller ponds behind the centre, the main one being the Pantaneta del Pueblo with a nice hide. There we saw a couple of Green Sandpipers an a single Common Sandpiper, 3 nice Black-tailed Godwits which woke up and started feeding frantically. There were a lot of Shovelers, the ubiquitous Mallards, a pair of female Teal and some more which we didn't see but could hear chirruping (they don't sound in the least duck-like), another pair of Black-necked Grebes. A large lump of raptor on the opposite shore, unobligingly partially hidden by growth, caused a lot of thought. Whatever it was, it didn't worry a rabbit (mentally retarded?) which came to inspect it at a distance. After 300 or so photos by Bob and we still hadn't got a clue, a female Marsh Harrier dropped out of the sky and attacked it, whereupon 'our' bird took flight and revealed itself to be another immature Marsh Harrier.

From there we went on to the observation point - the mirador - at Cantarranas, stopping to watch a flock of Cranes, splendid birds, which included an adult and a young bird which afforded very good views. The view from the mirador at Catarranas gives a great view of the whole lake which was hosting several thousand gulls, I guesstimated around 15.000, with at least a 75% accuracy! 'An awful lot' would probably be a far better quantitative estimate.

At this point, we split and I returned to Torremolinos, but not before having a nice female Hen Harrier fly across the road in front of the car, excellent views of it. It was a very pleasing finish to a good morning's birding with very pleasant company.