Albufera de Valencia, March 26th 2011

We spent a few hours touring around various sites within the Albufera natural park. Although maybe a little early for some of the usual summer visitors, we managed to see a total of 19 species, including a few of particular interest. Superb and sustained views of a male Bluethroat was perhaps the most pleasant. List included : Black Winged Stilt, Bluethroat, Little Egret, Cattle Egret, Garganey, Black Headed Gull, Yellow Legged Gull, Audouin´s Gull, Grey Heron, Hoopoe, House Sparrow, House Martin, Marsh Harrier, Redshank, Reed Bunting, Spotless Starling, Swallow, Yellow Wagtail, Wood Sandpiper

In Search Of The Great Bustard

On March 7th Dave and I headed for Castilla La Mancha in search of, lifers for the both of us,The Great Bustard but hoping also to add a number of birds to our year lists. On our way to the Steppes and lagoons of Albacete we saw many Magpie and Carrion crow plus Red-legged partridge and at the first lagoon Shelduck Black headed Gull, Mistle Thrush, Lapwing and Hoopoe. At the second lagoon we found Greater Flamingo, Marsh Harrier, Coot, Little Grebe, Black-winged Stilt, Avacet, Spotted Starling, Redshank, Common Sandpiper and Little ringed Plover.

Our next stop was the cereal fields amongst the Wind Farms producing at least 22 Great Bustards which we watched for a while before they all took flight. The background image for the Blog is a photo of the Bustards in flight.

Heading back to Valencia we stopped at 2 more lagoons and found Water Pipit, Snipe, Swallow, Rock Sparrow, Green Sandpiper, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Shoveler, Common Teal and a Buzzard plus on one lagoon hundreds of Lesser Flamingo.