01 November : Fuente de Piedra

Life has been a trifle fraught this week so when I awoke early this morning and all was tranquil and the sky clear, I thought, "Fuente de Piedra, here I come."
The reasoning was that as it was 1 November and All Saints Day (Todos los santos) when all the good little Spaniards would be at the cemeteries, laying bouquets of flowers for which they will have been well and truly ripped off, removing the dried and withered remains of last year's offering to Tío Paco or Tía María, cleaning up the headstone or whatever and then, after feeling all good and pious, shove off home and feed their faces, feeling all saintly for having done their filial (or whatever relationship) duties..
Wrong! They all went to Fuente de Piedra. Admittedly I was late arriving, just after 10, but they - the great unwashed - were there in their masses, along with yawling, uncontrolled brats, young and old on bicycles, mostly clad in their latest spandex cycling gear (and I thought that there was a recession) and even with their radio on in the case of one pair of unspeakable cyclists whilst another group felt that communication was best carried out by bawling.
By the time I had spent an hour there I was totally off the vast majority of the human race from which birders are generally exempt and included an ethical photographer from Córdoba who was gobsmacked by number of Stone Curlews (50+) in the ploughed field on the right and a couple from Otley (which isn't in Spain but West Yorkshire) and I didn't ask them what they thought.

Said photographer from Córdoba and myself tried to photograph the Stone Curlews but heat haze - yes, strong heat haze on 1 November! - made photography when the Stone Curlews were on the deck impossible and then the brightly coloured mob of pseudo humans going along the path to the Vicaria hide pushed them all off and the photograph here of 3 of them is the sole testimony of their by then distant presence.
By now I was wondering if a Gatling gun would be more effective than a Barratt .50 sniper rifle and a lot of ammo. I really was totally off the human race at that point.
There was nothing at the pond at the back, a lot of Shovelers on the lake, a Black Redstart and few Skylarks flew over, plus a few Crested Larks and Greenfinches. Oh yes, and a single Black-winged Stilt. The birder from Otley told me that he had seen ca.50 Cranes, the most seen so far, the afternoon of 31 October down towards Cantarranas.
Perhaps I could become the birding version of Billy  Connolly? After this morning I would not find it at all difficult.