Tarifa Autumn Tour – Day 7 Medina Sedonia A381 road and La Janda

Thurs 10 Sep 2015

As this was our last day we decided to have a bit of a lie-in. I wandered around the hotel gardens at about 8ish and found chiffchaff, stonechat, spotless starling, chaffinch, Sardinian warbler and heard a wren. The usual gang of house sparrows accompanied us for breakfast.

The Mediterranean was shrouded in fog this morning, so our morning pelagic trip was postponed to the afternoon by the operators. Instead we set off towards Medina to find white-rumped swifts, but had to return when David realised he had left his ‘bins at the breakfast table! Once back on track we stopped for a third and final time at the quarry by the Montenmedio golf course. We still did not find the eagle owl, but in the trees by the car we found wryneck, common whitethroat and a pied flycatcher.

We left for the long drive to Medina-Sedonia, where white-rumped swifts were known to be nesting under bridges on the A381 Algeciras–Jerez road around Km60. We did not know the exact location, but we found several likely looking spots. We drove up and down the old road beside the motorway searching, but we never found any. Unfortunately we managed to hit and kill a Sardinian warbler that flew directly in front of the car as cruised up and down. As we stood and ate our lunches the usual cast of raptors passed over, including a single Egyptian vulture. Red-rumped swallow in good numbers too.

We gave up on the white-rumped swifts and headed for a second visit to La Janda. The red-necked nightjar were worth a second look, but neither David nor I managed to find any! We had to wait for Bob to point out the three he had found.

We only managed to get a distant view of a single, perched black-winged kite on our previous visit, but this time we saw three much closer. Two of them were hunting, treating us to a display of their hovering and dropping with the wings held in a high V. One of the most memorable sightings of this trip.

As it was now so late in the afternoon we decided to cancel our pelagic trip and head back to the hotel. We decided to have one last look for the common bulbuls in Tarifa. This time their noisy calls indicated that they were around, but we never managed to see them in the half hour we spent in the car park!

That concluded our birding trip, as tomorrow we had to leave early the next morning to catch our early flight from Malaga to Birmingham.

Bob's Day 7 Blog

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Tarifa Autumn Tour – Day 6 Ojan Valley, Barbate Marshes and Sierra de la Plata

Wed 9 Sep 2015

We began our day with another early morning visit to Los Lances beach. There seemed to be more birds about today. Quite a few Audouin’s gulls were in front of the hide along with bar-tailed godwits, dunlin, sanderling and a couple of greater flamingos. Scanning further along the beach we found Kentish and ringed plovers, grey heron and little egret. Some black kite flew over and a couple landed on the beach. We continued along the full length of the board walk and then circled back. Cattle egret were in the field with livestock along with lots of corn bunting, a couple of yellow wagtails and a hunting kestrel. We saw three species of lark – skylark, crested and greater short-toed. As we slowly made our way back to the car we found zitting cisticola, stonechat, goldfinch and house sparrow and many bee-eaters overhead. Finally, near the car, both common and spotless starlings.

After returning to the hotel for breakfast we headed off to the Trafico/Punta Camorro headland for some more raptor watching. A flock of eight black storks flew over just as we arrived and then a steady stream of booted and short-toed eagles. The odd black kite and a solitary sparrowhawk showed. Nothing new to see so Bob suggested we head inland to the Ojan Valley.

As we turned onto the road into the valley we slowed to watch a short-toed eagle flying low over the fields. A bit further on we reversed back as we thought we had passed a tawny pipit sat on the fence, but it turned out to be a crested lark! A couple of kilometres into the valley we pulled off the road by a small stream to check a small colony of monarch butterflies. Numerous swifts and hirundines were about. We logged common, pallid and alpine swift, barn and red-rumped swallow, and house martin. We heard a Cetti’s warbler and the calls of bee-eaters as they passed over.

We drove on through a landscape dominated by dozens (if not hundreds) of wind turbines to the Embalse (reservoir) Almodovar, where on a rough track we dug out the chairs from the boot and sat and ate a picnic lunch. Bob told us to check out the surrounding mountain ridges for Bonelli’s eagle, but we were not lucky enough to spot any. The huge reservoir held yellow and white wagtails, grey heron, mallard and cattle egret. Mostly griffon vultures passing over, but the occasional short-toed eagle and honey buzzard. We watched aghast as a griffon vulture flew right through the arc of a huge wind turbine. It was not hit by the blade, but the air turbulence almost turned this enormous bird upside down.

Our next destination was the Barbate Marshes, a large area of shallow lagoons near the coast. We drove around these on the rough track, stopping at various spots to scan the lagoons with our ‘scopes. There was plenty to see, including some new species for our list. David found a stone curlew, and an osprey flew over. A good count of 49 spoonbill and 46 Audouin’s gull. A great white egret was apparently unusual for this spot. A long list of waders consisted of redshank, greenshank, black-winged stilt, dunlin, knot, sanderling, curlew sandpiper, ringed plover, Kentish plover, grey plover and avocet. As well as the Audouin’s there were also yellow-legged and lesser black-backed gulls.

We moved on to the bridge over the River Barbate in hope of finding Caspian terns. We did not find any of these, but better there were a couple of Lesser crested terns, a rare annual vagrant from Africa. They perched on posts on the far side of the river along with Sandwich terns, so we never managed to get a good close view.

Finally we drove to the coastal town of Bolonia and headed up to the mirador (view point) 300m up in the Sierra de la Plata. The view to the beach at Bolonia and over the Med to Morocco was quite spectacular. We settled down in the hope of seeing white-rumped swifts. The antics of the breeding griffon vultures high on the crags above us fascinated us while we waited for the swifts to show, and a lone blue rock thrush showed for a while. It goes without saying that the skies above had many passing raptors (honey buzzard, booted eagle, black kite) and dozens more bee-eaters. Sadly, the swifts did not show up.

We had dinner at a restaurant frequented by the Tarifa surfing crowd – the three of us were probably more than twice the age of any of the other clientele!

Bob's Day 6 Blog

Tarifa Autumn Tour – Day 5 Encinas Borrachas Track and Sierra de las Nieves

Tue 8 Sep 2015

We did not do any early morning excursion today as we were foregoing breakfast in the hotel and making the long drive to Gaucin to pick up Lis who was joining us for the day. As we prepared to set off I heard the deep oo-hu call of an eagle owl from somewhere on the hillside above the hotel, but sadly it was too dark to have any chance of locating it.

After the long drive we breakfasted at a cafe in Gaucin before picking up Lis. The mountain scenery was quite spectacular as we set off as a temperature inversion had filled the valleys with fog.

Our first stop was in a layby near the village of Atajate. Linnet, red-legged partridge and stonechat seemed insignificant compared to the blue rock thrushes we found here. Bob had a fleeting glimpse of a rock thrush, but it had disappeared before any of the rest of us manage to connect with it.

We parked the car at the start of the Encinas Borrachas track and set off for a walk along it. By the farm buildings we soon found goldfinch, stonechat, Thekla lark and a family party of black-eared wheatears. David spotted a bird perched on a pylon which proved to be a wryneck – an odd tick for this treeless heathland habitat. A spectacled warbler briefly showed, so we hung around for a while until we managed to get a better view of it. As we moved on we added both southern grey and woodchat shrikes.

A few raptors began to appear over the high ridge to our left. All the usual species – griffon vulture, booted and short-toed eagles and also a solitary Montagu’s harrier. Small  groups of honey buzzard lazily drifted across heading south as well. We counted over a hundred of them. With our scopes we located several Spanish ibex high up on the crags. On retracing our steps back to the car we added swallow, swift, great tit, redstart and both black and northern wheatears.

We drove a short distance to a restaurant (Pension El Navasillo) set on a high mountain road. Eyes to the skies as we ate our lunch counting the raptors cruising over – short-toed eagle 6, black kite 6, booted eagle 5, honey buzzard 57, Egyptian vulture 1, griffon vulture ?. Good numbers of bee-eaters passed over as well, but the loose flocks were impossible to count.

After lunch we headed for the Sierra de las Nieves Natural Park. The picnic area near the entrance was quiet. The most notable of the few species seen were redstart and woodlark. Further into the park we found a mixed feeding flock which included willow, Bonelli’s and Orphean warblers, blue and crested tits and a firecrest. Higher up on the track we found mistle thrush, spotted flycatcher, black wheatear, goldfinch and both common and black redstart. We logged raven high up on the ridges and griffon vulture and another 30 honey buzzards. Returning back down Bob spotted a couple of rock buntings flying up from the track, but although we searched for them, we never located them again.

On the way back to Gaucin we stopped off at the Cueva (cave) de Gato with the hope of seeing dipper and wagtail around the clear, blue pool. No chance of this though as kids and dogs splashing around in the water had frightened any bird life away. A walk by the Rio Guadiaro produced very little other than the song of a Cetti’s warbler.

We returned to Bob’s house in Gaucin where a delicious evening meal was prepared for us by Bob’s wife, Dawn.

Bob's Day 5 Blog

Tarifa Autumn Tour – Day 4 Bonanza Salt Pans and Chipiona

Mon 7 Sep 2015

We drove to Tarifa for this morning’s pre-breakfast excursion. On the beach we found sanderling, dunlin and turnstone. We wandered along the causeway towards Tarifa island looking out to sea and managed to get good views of a couple of shearwater species – Cory’s and Balearic. Lesser kestrel and a hoopoe were over the island, but we did not walk that far as the wind was quite chilly. Back at the beach we added yellow-legged gull, sandwich tern, ringed plover, and bar-tailed godwit. Before returning for breakfast we had another quick look in town for the bulbuls, again without any luck.

After breakfast we drove west heading for the Bonanza Salt Pans. We called in again for a brief visit to the Montenmedio Golf Club. Still no luck with the eagle owl, but we ticked alpine swift and jackdaw.

A few small lagunas at Sanlucar de Barameda were well worth a visit as they held lots of interesting birds. Most notably marbled and white-headed ducks, both rarities (counts of 18 and 14 respectively). Others were squacco heron, little egret, purple swamphen, glossy ibis, common and red-crested pochard, gadwall, shoveller, little grebe, coot and moorhen. One other interesting spot was a common waxbill, an introduced African species that now breeds successfully in southern Spain.

The Bonanza salt pans is a great birding spot holding large flocks of flamingos, avocets and black-tailed godwit and hundreds of other birds. Too many to list them all, but new ones for our list included curlew, avocet, ruff, greenshank, curlew sandpiper, little tern, black-necked grebe and curlew sandpiper. While we stood by the car eating our lunch we also saw a red kite and an osprey.

We had to move on and stopped briefly at the nearby Laguna Tarelo. This was very quiet, but we did spot a couple of nigh herons, along with marbled and white-headed ducks. A drive through Algaida Pine woods was fruitless. A quick excursion out of the car before we were driven back by annoying insects produced just spotted flycatcher and Sardinian warbler.

Our final port-of-call for today was the coastal town of Chipiona. As we sat eating ice-creams there were very few birds about. Yellow-legged and lesser black-backed gulls on the beach and a lone gannet out at sea. House sparrow, swallow and house martin were the only other species around. We stationed ourselves next to a warehouse where our target species were known to roost. We had a long boring wait with nothing much to see, but then in the distance a small bird approached. As it neared we were able to identify it as our target species – Little Swift. After a quick fly around it darted into its nest under the eaves of the building never to be seen again! It was a further 20 minutes before another showed up, but then they started to arrive in numbers and treat us to an aerial display. We counted a maximum of 13 of them in the air together. A superb end to the day.

Dinner was pizza at a sea front restaurant in Tarifa. Watching the Morocco ferry port we decided to that we would go on a pelagic trip from here on Thursday.

Bob's Day 4 Blog

Tarifa Autumn Tour – Day 3 Huerta Grande and Castillo de Castellar

Sun 6 Sep 2015

For our pre-breakfast walk we simply crossed the road to Los Lances beach. It was till too dark to see anything in the stone pine woodland behind the beach so we headed straight out onto the sand. Not a great deal about – just yellow-legged gull and sandwich tern. Wandering around the grounds of a hotel we spotted crested lark, feral pigeon, collared dove, house sparrows and linnet. We glimpsed a small brightly coloured parrot which we tried to follow around the hotel grounds. We eventually caught up with a small group of these, which turned out to be Love Birds (escaped cage birds). We had another look in the pine trees before returning for breakfast, managing to locate spotted flycatcher and short-toed treecreeper.

After breakfast we headed towards Jimena de la Frontera. We made an unplanned stop at a local privately owned nature reserve, Huerta Grande, where we had a guided tour by the proprietor. We spent 20 minutes in a hide overlooking a small pond and surrounded by feeders. We logged lots of serins and blue tit, great tit, common whitethroat, chaffinch, house sparrow, blackcap, garden warbler and collared dove.

As we chatted to the owner prior to departing a good raptor passage began to develop overhead. Booted eagles, short-toed eagles, griffon vulture and dozens of honey buzzard. We decided to go back to the Cazalla Observatory near Tarifa, but there were probably more bird watchers there than migrating birds!

Giving up on the raptor watch point we resumed our journey towards Jimena, stopping to eat lunch by the Rio Hozgargante. This sadly turned out to be rather disappointing as the river had almost completely dried up. Walking along the river bed we eventually came to a little water where we found Sardinian warbler, blue tit, nightingale, robin, blackbird, goldfinch and blackcap. A couple of griffon vulture passed over. We found evidence here of bird trapping. We spoke to an English lady who lived locally who told us that the authorities did very little to stop this illegal practice.

Next we drove the length of the Marchenilla Track. This proved a bit more interesting with sightings of woodchat shrike, little owl, wheatear, bee-eaters, stonechats, Montagu’s harrier, buzzard and red-rumped swallow. At the end of the track we stopped for a coffee break before retracing our route. On the second pass we added a black-eared wheatear.

We now aimed for Castillo de Castellar de la Frontera where we hoped to find white-rumped swifts. En-route we stopped by a bridge near Presa de Guadarranque to look for Monarch butterflies. We saw some, but they were far below us under the bridge. We stopped again at a high point overlooking the Embalse (reservoir) del Guadarranque to look for the two-tailed pasha butterfly. We got great close-up views of this magnificent species as one of them defended his territory against an interloper.

The Castillo was heaving with locals and tourists on this fine Sunday afternoon and it was difficult to find a place to park. The castle is perched high atop a hill giving extensive views of the surrounding countryside. We hung around for an hour or so but never spotted any white-rumped swifts, but there were quite a few raptors passing, and it was unusual to be looking down on many of them from our high vantage point. The only new species added was crag martins.

Bob's Blog of Day 3

Tarifa Autumn Tour – Day 2 Punta Comorro and La Janda

Sat 5 Sep 2015

Bob’s powers of persuasion failed to get the hotel to provide breakfast any earlier than 9.00am, so to make the most of the day we set off for an early morning visit to the local beach, Playa de les Lances. Being so far south (the north African coast was only some 15-20km away) it was only just beginning to get light as we set off at 7.30am.

By the time we had walked along the board-walk out to the beach front hide there was sufficient light for birding. Scanning along the beach we soon found several species of waders – common sandpiper, ringed plover, bar-tailed godwit, dunlin, sanderling and redshank. Many gulls, including Audouin’s again, and a couple of greater flamingos. We continued along the board-walk for a short distance before veering off and returning via the scrubland behind the beach. Here we found goldfinch, lots of corn buntings, zitting cisticola, stonechat, melodious warbler, collared dove and both common and spotless starling.

We returned to the hotel for breakfast on the terrace, with the resident house sparrows queuing up for their share of our bread crumbs.

After breakfast our first destination was a car-park in Tarifa! The reason – a pair of common bulbuls had nested there. This was unusual as this is a species that breeds just across the Straits of Gibraltar in north Africa. Ten minutes hanging around the car-park produced nothing so we walked along a narrow lane to see what else we could find. We turned up spotted flycatcher and turtle dove and the overhead presence of bee-eaters was heralded by their bubbling call. Black kite and booted eagle passed over (I was still learning how to tell these apart), and a Cetti’s warbler burst into song nearby. Back in the car-park there was still no sign of the bulbuls so we headed out of town to Punta Camorro, a headland where we could watch the migrating raptors.

In the hour or so we spent here we saw upwards of a hundred raptors circling round gaining height as they prepared to make the journey across the sea to Africa. The list consisted of honey buzzard, black kite, Egyptian vulture, booted and short-toed eagles and the occasional sparrowhawk. A fine woodchat shrike posed on a nearby fence and we also spotted willow warbler and stonechat.

We moved on to the Cazalla watchpoint on the coast road just outside Tarifa. A few more raptors passing over, but it was fairly quiet so we decided to drive west to La Janda.

We turned off the main road onto the rough track that goes through La Janda, and we had only gone a couple of hundred metres when we spotted the first great bird of the day – a black-winged kite perched in a tree. A very distant view, but another first for me. We stopped to eat lunch at the point where the track turns to follow the canal running through La Janda. Whilst here we saw both marsh and Montagu’s harrier, black stork, dozens of white stork and the ubiquitous bee-eaters.

As we continued slowly driving beside the canal we added night heron, lapwing and alpine swift and lots of others. As we arrived near some farm buildings we bumped into several more British birders. They had been here a while fruitlessly searching under the trackside trees for roosting red-necked nightjar that were known to be present. Bob, our expert leader, soon located one. Whilst we were all squinting towards it trying to make it out he found another that was more obvious (laying on bare earth rather than the leaf litter). See Bob’s blog for some great pictures.

We drove on for a while and then turned into a field onto a dirt track following the edge of a laguna. This proved very productive. Green, wood and common sandpipers, spoonbills and one each of squacco heron, ruff and spotted redshank. As we drove along we put up a large flock of glossy ibis that circled around and landed further along the laguna. Further along some ducks took flight, one of which was a rare marbled duck.

Retracing our route back to the main road we spotted lesser kestrel and woodchat shrike, and just before leaving a couple of great white egrets.

On the way back to the hotel we called into the Montenmedio Golf Course where we connected with the bald ibis that is a regular there. We spent a few minutes at the old quarry next to the golf course but did not find the eagle owl that is often to be found there.

Bob's Day 2 Blog

Tarifa Autumn Tour – Day 1 Arrival

Fri 4 Sep 2015

David and I made a last minute decision to travel to Spain to do Wingspan Bird Tour’s Autumn Migration Tour. As we left Birmingham on a very early flight we were lucky enough to see a Brockenspectre of the aircraft projected onto the cloud by the low sun. On arrival at Malaga airport we were met by our guide, Bob Buckler.

After a stop for coffee, we headed for the Guadalhorce Nature Reserve on the coast not far from the airport. A couple of hours spent here in warm sunshine got the tour off to a good start with 38 species. Highlight for me was Audouin’s gull, a new tick for my life list. Waders included Kentish plover, little stint, turnstone, ringed plover, green, common and wood sandpipers. Birds of prey seen were osprey, black kite, booted and short-toed eagles. The scarce white-headed duck was also found on one of the small ponds. As we headed back to the car we found a small flock of whimbrel on the beach.

We had a long drive west to Tarifa, so before setting off we popped into a local supermarket to get some lunch. To break up the journey we stopped at Estepona Golf Club where we ate our lunch and did a little more birding. Flying south were griffon and Egyptian vultures, short-toed eagle, black kite and Montagu’s harrier. The concrete apron of an irrigation pond for the golf course had white wagtail and common sandpiper, and cattle egret and a hoopoe were making use of the well manicured lawns.

It was about 5pm when we checked into the Hotel Le Pena on the coast road just outside Tarifa. A raven flew over as we made our way to our rooms. After half an hour or so to sort out our gear we all met up again for an evening walk. We found stonechat and zitting cisticola along the hotel’s drive, and house and (possible) Spanish sparrows in the surrounding fields. Lots of cattle egrets passing over on their way to their roost.

We returned to the hotel to get ready for our evening meal, which we took at a nearby hotel/restaurant.

Bob's Day 1 Blog