May Day at Fuente de Piedra

Another extraordinary morning at Fuente de Piedra with lots of waders, not the same quantity of numbers or species - only 13 today - as last Saturday, but with 2 new spp.- singles each of Bar-tailed Godwit and a splendid Knot in virtually full breeding plumage, as were some lovely adult Curlew Sandpipers, some an incredibly dark brick red. On the negative side, no Temminck's Stints.

Rather surprising was the continued presence from last Saturday of both male Ruffs, the darker one even further into full breeding plumage, and the female - the Reeve - with her 6 rings, plus a bundle more of them. By the by, this female was ringed on 5 May 2006 at Wommels, Iens, Netherlands so she is just under 3 years old.

There were more Whiskered Terns, very smart, with a peculiar croaking call which sounded more like aerial frogs! This morning we saw a total of 5 Lesser Flamingos, the sixth hopefully practising her incubation skills. Rather surprising was a distant Black Kite.
On the negative side, and leaving aside the fact that I am not a great lover of the human race unless they are birders (and not even all of them), the presence of the masses at Fuente de Pîedra in the late morning was a disaster, as they are (a) noisy, (b) are sufficiently ignorant that they walk in front of those who are obviously watching and/or trying to photograph them, (c) let dogs and little children off their leads (it is a reserve) and (d) in some cases were incapable of keeping to the paths and wandering all over the sodding place and putting up the birds, thus enabling those who do want to see them to watch them disappear rapidly over the horizon.

And not a warden in sight!

I shall be blogging about this in the not too distant future when I have some nicely incriminating photographs and any of you who wish to contribute with details of date, time, place and offence are very welcome to do so!