Friday, September 24, 2021

Back birding after summer recess




I have to apologise to all the followers of my blog. For not keeping the blog up to date of late.

Its been just too hot for me to go birding through the peak summer months, and to be honest, I don't think I've missed anything of any significance or any thing that matters, we've had a brilliant spring migration and we've seen most everything you would expect to see plus more.

Wood Sandpipers

It's been a busy few months keeping he tourist entertained. (Singing) And with John and Michelle being away in the UK for a family wedding  we've missed several weeks birding, and with Gareth house hunting and out of loop we've missed him.

So we've had 2 mornings birding, it was great just to be out there, with John and Mark of the NBBC, great to have the banter back, and with like-minded people. And so a quick summary of some of the birds seen.

An escaped Oranged cheeked Cockatiel had me scratching my head for a while, till I recognised the call.  Year's ago I did have an escaped bird ( joey ) that came to my house twice a day for about a year for breakfast and dinner till he vanished maybe the millet seed wasn't up to scratch?

Oranged cheeked Cockatiel
( joey )

  Whinchat, and hundreds of Yellow Wagtails around the fields of Catral,  also Stone Curlew, Little-ringed Plover, 3 Wood Sandpipers, Ruff, 50 + Bee-eaters, Booted Eagle, Bluethroat, Collared Pratincole, plus all the usual suspects,

Whinchat


Yellow Wagtail


Stone Curlew


 Bee-eater

El Clot

Interesting morning but nothing mega to report, but plenty of quackers there, 8 Gadwall lots of White-headed Duck, Marbled Teal, Shovelers,  Common Pochard, a few Kingfisher pretending to be cruise missiles, Spotted Flycatchers, Reed Warblers, Snipe, Marsh Harrier, Glossy Ibis. Little and Black-necked Grebe. It's only going to get better as autumn progress?

Black-necked Grebe

John suggested a quick look at the Santa Pola Salinas was in order, I'm glad we did as it was quite a good decision.

 Caspian Tern

We pick out in the Black-headed Gull roost a Caspian Tern, which is a good find for us, a few lesser Black-backed Gulls in the mix, 

Osprey

2 Ospreys circled overhead, which gave us a photo opportunity,  a canteen of 37+ Spoonbills did a flypast,  Great white Egrets, Turnstones, Sanderling, Black-tailed Godwit, Redshank, Greenshank, Collared Pratincoles,  Audouin Gulls, and a point-blank Cettis warbler under the minimum focusing distance


Osprey

. And on the beach at El Pinet lots of Sandwich Tern and some Great Tits on the beach,  they always seemed to be in pairs? and double what you'd see in the pine forests of Maigmo Mountain.

 Unbelievable

Going to go back at some point and look for a Bearded Tit?


Turnstone

Let see what next week brings 

Make some news

Glad to be back online, have fun

Cheers BT.



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