Coto Donana - The Jose Valverde Visitors Centre Loop

We did the loop twice. This is a 60km round trip from El Rocio to the start of the loop then about 50 Km on pot-holed and dirt track roads. Hard work but even in heavy rain the roads were all passable and there were a lot of good birds to see.

Black Kites, Buzzards, Black Redstarts, and Iberian Grey Shrikes on the way in from El Rocio. We also saw Woodchat Shrikes but couldn't get the picture.

Black Kite

Buzzard

Black Redstart

Iberian Grey Shrike

We did the eastern route via the Bombas de Casa pumping station the first day, returning by the same route. The second day we took the western route going via the Hato Raton Farm and then coming back on the eastern route.

My advice would be to give the western route a miss. It was mostly industrial scale farming and all the ditches had recently been dredged with the soil dumped back on the canal side vegetation and reeds. There was very little to see other than one stranded motorist that we had to stop to help. It's a bit like being in the outback.

Good views of White Storks, Spoonbills, Black Stork, and Black-tailed Godwits alongside the Arroyo de la Ciguens.

Spoonbills

Black Stork

We had two or three encounters with a Black-winged Kite and on one of the occasions with a pair of them, at the start of the eastern loop. A life tick for me but he really didn't want his picture taken. I also managed to overexpose the only clear shots that I had. The best of the rest is shown below.

Black-winged Kite

Much confusion was then caused by going back to the location on the last day of the holiday and photographing the bird below, hunting on the same strip of land. Sad to say, it wasn't until I got home that I noticed the yellow eye. The old problem, too busy trying to get the photograph and not seeing the bird that is in front of me. In my defense, it does look a bit like a Black-winged Kite and it was in the right location.

Hen Harrier

Hen Harrier

Buzzard

Glossy Ibis

Corn Bunting

Common Crane

Flamingos in the rain

Flamingo at the Jose Valverde Visitors Centre

Green Sandpiper

Griffon Vulture

Squacco Heron

Hoopoe

Hoopoe

There are a group of derelict holiday homes about 5km from the Visitors Centre. They are marked as Choza de Huerta Tejada on the map. It is worth stopping here to look for the colony of Lesser Kestrels based around the buildings. Although you will need to brush up on your identification skills as there are also a couple of "common" Kestrels in the same area.

Lesser Kestrel

Lesser Kestrel

Lesser Kestrel

Lesser Kestrel

I also had a Subalpine Warbler on the fence in front of these buildings but the photograph is not worth showing.

Marsh Harrier

Purple Swamphen

We also found a couple of small flocks of Spanish Sparrows on the way back. They seemed to be mostly females but there was one good looking male present although he was difficult to photograph.

Spanish Sparrow

It was a couple of long days being shaken about in the car but you felt that there was still a lot more to see. The Black-winged Kite deserved having a day dedicated to it in order to get that definitive picture but time is all too short.

Mallorca - s'Albufera

I have just returned from a weeks birding in Mallorca. It was good but perhaps not quite as good as I expected. We saw around ninety five species and I ended up with fourteen life ticks so it can't all be bad. However, we lost a day to bad weather, travelling around the island was a nightmare, with thousands of racing cyclists clogging up all the roads, and despite generally good lighting conditions the picture opportunities were limited.

So much for the moans, how about the good points. The main one, in a week, I only saw one dog walker, bliss, no disturbance for me and no disturbance for all the ground nesting birds.

We stayed near Puerto Pollenca giving easy access to the Albufereta, the S'Albufera, the Boquer Valley and the mountains in the north of the island. It was also close to our first target bird the Audouin's Gull.

In the 60s this species was down to around 1000 pairs worldwide. Conservation has enabled a recovery in numbers but it is still endangered and one of the worlds rarest gulls. You wouldn't think so standing on Pollenca beach. Wave a bread roll in the air and you have plenty of volunteers to have their picture taken.

They even come in pairs although there wasn't much sharing of food between them.

Still at least it gives them something to do whilst waiting for the next bread roll.

Our first full day was at the Park Natural de s'Albufera. It is a great place but don't go there on a Sunday. The locals use it as a somewhere to go for a walk with the family and it was full of people. Weekdays it is a bit quieter. You see a lot of the birds that you would find in a wetland in the UK but there are also some unusual ones and some like the Black-winged Stilt are just a bit more common than at home.

Black-winged Stilt

The Park also gave me four life ticks in Purple Swamphen, Collared Pratincol and Squacco Heron, although none of them gave me a decent picture, and Zitting Cisticola that gave me no picture at all.

Purple Swamphen

Collared Pratincol

Squacco Heron

Not life ticks but other great birds seen included Osprey, Great Reed Warbler, Night Heron, Red-knobbed Coot, and the very common (over there) Kentish Plover.

Osprey

Great Reed Warbler

Night Heron

Kentish Plover

Red-knobbed Coot

The Red-knobbed Coot is part of a program to reintroduce the bird to the Albufera from mainland Spain, hence the neck band.



On the southern edge of the s'Albufera you will find the Depuradora, a sewage works with an observation platform giving views across the settlement pools. This and the narrow road leading to it were the must visit location for our trip and the next blog will cover this area.