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.
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