Sunday, 15 February; Guadalhorce: Back again, my wife says it's my second home. This time with a additions to the domingueros with Mario Vargas and his wife Paqui and their son, Alberto, along with Federico, Patricia and Antonio Toro, plus meeting up with Antonio Miguel who was on duty and Sandra arrived late. As detailed above, things went wrong for me but that was towards the end of the morning. Up to that point it was not bad. Lots of Barn Swallows, at one point a large flock of some 200+ came in, there being at least another 40 plus around, stayed around a few minutes and pushed off - birds with a mission, with House Martins but no Sand Martins also present. The male Garganey was visibly present on the big pond, a cracking little bird, and we saw only 4 Teal today, are they leaving? A single Common Sandpiper represented the best of the 3 wader spp. seen, the others being 2 Sanderling and 1 Kentish Plover. A seawatchpf about 30minutes showed a small easterly movement of Med. Gulls - it's that time of year - and 6 Bonxies (Great Skuas for the uninitiated, Bonxie is the Shetland name widely used by seabirders) and a few adult Gannets ploughing westwards to the Strait of Gibraltar.
Sunday, 15 February, harbour at La Caleta de Vélez: Gonzalo Lage, Kirri and Antonio García saw a 1W Iceland Gull! Plus c.30 Kittiwakes and 2 Common Terns, while yesterday, Kirri and Antonio saw 4 Black terns - this is getting ridiculous!
Friday, 13 February, Guadalhorce: Back to the mundane with Federico where we later met up with Antonio Miguel and Kirri and a very pleasant walk around the ponds, not that there is much in the way of waders to lighten the eye (as far as I am concerned) as the water levels are far too high. Nevertheless, the morning was warm after a while and there were some Swallows and House Martins around. A persil-white Mute Swan - where that had come from, heaven knows! - flapped its way majestically across and disappeared towards the river. It was nice to see 2 Kentish Plovers the male with its little ginnger cap, and 3 Penduline Tits gave quite decent views.
Birds of prey were reasonably well represented as usual in recent weeks, the Osprey (it is the only one in the province!), a Buzzard, a Booted Eagle (far fewer this winter), a Peregrine (one fell into a tall chimney this week in Málaga - stupid bird!) and two or three Marsh Harriers and one of the ubiquitous Kestrels - 6 spp, not bad!
Thursday, 12 February, Tarifa and La Janda: Down to Tarifa and early (0850) to the hide on the Los Lances beach opposite the gasolinera. About 150 Audouin's Gulls on the beach, a nice 1st winter Ring-billed Gull (which had apparently been around for a couple of weeks) and a smashing adult Caspian Tern, which showed off and ploughed forth left to right and back again several times before settling down on the beach right in front of me. Not a bad start, so off for coffee and a tostada at San José del Valle where I was to meet up with Steven Daly of AndalucíanGuides with a couple of clients who has also kindly allowed me to show a couple of his photos here.
After a much needed coffee, we went up to Bolonia, seeing the Great Spotted Cuckoo which insisted on playing peek-a-boo as can be seen and making life difficult for Steve to photograph this most attractive cuckoo. There are no prizes for finding it in the photo on the left.From there we went on up to the cliff face where both the rare swifts are in the summer months. The one on the right here shows one of the five Black Kites we saw with a Griffon Vulture - there were more around - and we also saw a single Red Kite, whilst I learnt later from Javi Elorriaga that an Egyptian Vulture had been seen.
It was now time to head down to La Janda, an extremely soggy one after recent rains, and only the canal track going in opposite the run off to Zahara and the northern lateral one from the N-340 across to Benalup are negotiable, the central track is an unspeakable quagmire in places where a caterpillar transport or a small hovercraft would appear to be the only options. But nevertheless there were birds to be seen, although not necessarily in the order given here.One of the first and possibly the best of the day was a beautiful male Hen Harrier, although it could have cooperated and White Storks there were, of course, including one whose colour ring, a rather decrepit and aged one, could be read and a single Black Stork, always a good bird to see.
There were only 4 Cranes seen, a very poor number at a time when there are normally several hundred moving N from Morocco. A single Great White Egret (I am old fashioned), call 'em Great White Herons if you so desire, was present and a single Green Sandpiper flew along the canal, a raher poor showing for waders up to that point with Steven as we parted to the bridge over the canal and I went off towards Benalup, although I might as well have saved the diesel as there was little except 2 Purple Boghens at the little pond at the top of the central track. From there it was time turn around and head off for the N-340, stopping to watch some 50 rather disconsolate looking Lapwings standing hunched up on the mud while 4 Greenshanks, rather nervous ones, on the way, and thence home.
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