My spouse and I reached southern Spain’s Costa del Sol area on October nineteenth, staying till the 4th of November. Spain, popping out of a multi-year drought, had begun receiving promising early season rains. After which, on October twenty ninth, these rains turned torrential, resulting in Spain’s worst-ever pure catastrophe. To this point once I’m penning this, 217 deaths have been reported.
We, happily, have been staying in Algeciras, a metropolis which skilled no main injury from this week-long storm. The identical couldn’t be stated for sure cities uphill from Málaga, the town into which we had flown, Jerez de la Frontera, which we had visited solely two days earlier than, and particularly, the extra jap province of Valencia.
I really feel extremely shallow and insensitive penning this, however this storm additionally actually tousled my birding. However, this being a web site for birders, that’s what I have to write. Though our journey was work-related, I had had excessive hopes of additionally experiencing, for the second time, one of many world’s nice avian migration spectacles, as lots of of 1000’s of raptors and storks fly throughout the comparatively slim waters of the Strait of Gibraltar. (That may be a view throughout the Strait, with Africa within the background, on the high of this submit.) However even earlier than the storm revved up, wild winds meant that no raptors have been to be seen on the mornings I had accessible. So I needed to content material myself with a lot smaller numbers of a lot smaller birds, flitting round their Andalucian dwelling.
The very morning of the local weather disaster, I headed off to the Cazallas Hovering Hen Observatory, simply in case there was some raptor motion. No such luck. Then I proceeded to the island of Tarifa, Europe’s southernmost level, within the hopes of seeing some seabirds flying by. Sadly, the already worsening climate situations have been accompanied by my discovery which you can’t get on the island with out an appointment, which I didn’t have.
Nonetheless, the location gave me some good views of Northern Gannets, in addition to the shock of some strongly marked shorebirds I didn’t initially acknowledge. It appears odd that these 12 birds might be lifers for me, because the Ruddy Turnstone is a cosmopolitan species that I might properly have seen in coastal Mexico or California. However I had by no means executed so, and lifers they have been.
I appreciated this picture of Nice Cormorants and Yellow-legged Gulls, because the African mountains, generally known as one of many Pillars of Hercules, completely framed the Spanish rock on which they stood.
Spanish Yellow-legged Gulls could be fairly orderly.
I then moved on to the mouth of the Palmones River in close by Algeciras, the place I noticed a bigger variety of species. I loved managing a pleasant image of a Frequent Chiffchaff. (Which is an amusing title for us Individuals.) My picture of a Zitting Cisticola was not as pleasing, however the fowl made up for it with its much more amusing title.
As at all times, this web site supplied a superb variety of White Storks.
By the top of the day, my grand complete for birds of prey was one Eurasian Kestrel in Cazallas, one other one in Palmones, and a single Booted Eagle and one Black Kite in Palmones.
4 days later, we drove north from Tarifa to the airport at Málaga, previous to flying south to Marrakesh in Morocco. The climate was windy, as at all times in Tarifa, with clouds protecting the hilltops. All of the sudden, some 40 huge Eurasian Griffons flew over a ridge on the Mirador del Estrecho (Strait Viewpoint) as we drove up. I rapidly pulled the automotive over to snap pictures as they step by step flew greater, till they disappeared into the clouds. Thankfully, the Viewpoint has a present store, so my spouse had no drawback with the surprising cease.
