The Region
of Murcia isn’t exactly famous for its raptors – in fact when I first moved
here I used to think of it as being similar to my home county of Essex in those
times – commonest raptor being the Kestrel, with Marsh harriers in a few
places, augmented in the winter by the occasional Hen Harrier and Merlin.
Over the
years however, I’ve seen most of the breeding Spanish raptors here and in the
last few years with the help of local birdwatchers, I have seen an actual
pattern / passage of them. Not on the
scale of places such as Tarifa, but all the same there are ‘good’ times of the
year to see them, and good places to see them from.
Locally, the best places
are the coastal mountains south of Cartagena towards Mazarron, and my favorite place to view from (which doesn’t involve a lot of mountain climbing
and can be driven to) is Cabo Tiñoso which overlooks the bay of ‘Puerto de
Mazarron’. Actually it is quite a
sightseeing location due to the massive 38 cm Vickers cannons in the fort built
on top of the cliffs. Higher up the mountain is a group of
antennae. The best viewing spot for
numbers of birds is a ‘layby’ (actually just an area where the track is a
little wider) on the way up to the antennae – when going to Cabo Tiñoso,
instead of taking the left turn to the guns, continue straight up and the spot
is on the left.
View inland, from the antennae layby - at over 300 metres above sea level,
good views can be had over the surrounding countryside
When to
go? The best time seems to be the period
from the beginning of September to mid October.
As to time of day, I’ve normally gone there from mid-afternoon (around
4pm) to dusk, but other people I know have been in the morning with just the
same sort of results.
It was bearing
all this in mind that when Mick Brewer asked me the week before last if there
was anywhere to go for an afternoon before he returned to the UK, having heard
that raptors were being seen, I automatically thought of Cabo Tiñoso. So we
arranged to have a look on Thursday, 25th September.
We actually
arrived at the layby and started looking at 16:45, and about 10 minutes later
we saw our first raptors. The conditions
were cloudy with a north-easterly breeze, and the first few birds we saw (a
small group of 5) took some effort to identify – they were high up, and were
either Common or Honey Buzzards (we finally decided Honeys). We were
worried that if all the birds were so high up, we might have i.d. problems, but
we needn’t have worried - as time went on and it cooled down, the birds seemed
to come in (almost all from the West) lower and lower. We noticed that they all seemed to carry on
to the sea, but we couldn’t see exactly where they went due to there being a
mountain in the way. So we stayed there
for a full hour, and then went down to the fort to see if they were any easier
to see there.
At the fort area we remained close to the
carpark (more than anything because it was by now threatening rain, and in the
surrounding hills we could hear thunder) and found somewhere out of the wind to
set up the ‘scopes. In actual fact, in
the end we needn’t have worried too much about the ‘scopes as some of the birds
came VERY close (and seemed to be investigating us!). We had one Honey Buzzard hang over us for
quite a few seconds, and there was a Hobby that seemed to be making circuits
around the fort area even though we couldn’t see what it might be feeding on –
there seemed to be an absolute dearth of passerines. There was also a pair of Peregrines making
various passes around the place.
We stayed
there until 7pm, by which time it was getting quite dull, and as we didn’t want
to get caught in a storm, we made our way back to the Mar Menor.
In the 2 ¼ hours
we spent there, we saw the following:
71 Honey
Buzzard
1 Common
Buzzard
3 Marsh
Harrier
3 Hobby
2
Sparrowhawk
3 Kestrel
2 Peregrine
Other
raptors that have been seem this autumn on passage from the same coastal
mountain range have been Short-toed Eagle; Montagu’s Harrier; Pallid Harrier; Elenora’s Falcon;
Osprey; Booted Eagle; Red Kite; Black Kite; Egyptian Vulture.
Following
on, a selection of photos I was able to take before the lack of light made it impossible.
Typically variable - Honey Buzzards
Marsh Harrier
Honey Buzzard
Very rapid Peregrine!
Hobby
Typical Honey Buzzard, keeping an eye on everything, with snake-like head & neck
The Honey Buzzard that flew low directly over us
Chauu
Nice!!
ReplyDeleteSaludos camperos.