After a
hectic week back in the U.K., I arrived in Spain on Wednesday evening (17th May 2017), to be
asked by a birding friend if I’d fancy the weekend in Tarifa! Those that know me will know that I didn’t
take much persuading, so at 6 o’clock on Friday morning, we were en route.
We had a
particularly clear run, and even with a coffee stop, we got down into Tarifa
town by 12 midday.
Calling in
at the ‘Colectivo Ornitologico Cigueña Negra’ (Black Stork) office, we got the latest gen, which wasn’t
particularly inspiring. Apparently there
would be easterlies in the afternoon picking up in strength, to be strong winds
for the rest of the weekend, dropping slightly on Monday! There was just the possibility of some
raptors coming over from Morocco (mainly Honey Buzzards) in the afternoon, but
very little after for the rest of the weekend.
Well, first
things first, my companion (Kuco) had never seen the Bulbuls that have taken up
residence in the town, so off we went to the Pensioners Club and only pay
carpark in the town, to see if there were any around. It took us about half an
hour, not being helped by a couple of Nightingales singing from the fenced-off
eucalyptus trees. Eventually we found
one, which then showed itself clearly for a couple of minutes by standing on a
cluster of spotlights in the middle of the carpark.
Bulbul, in a eucalyptus at the edge of the carpark ...
... which then came out to perch under a spotlight cluster, giving us clear views
Bumping into
Sarry from Cigueña Negra, he told us that there was a raptor passage beginning,
and the best place to watch was at Punto Camorra to the east of Tarifa
itself. We made our way there and were
rewarded, just as we arrived, by seeing a group of Honey Buzzards slightly
above eye-level which had just come in having crossed the Straits.
We remained
there for about an hour and a half, and in the end had quite a good movement of
raptors, counting 33 Griffon Vultures, about 100 Honey Buzzards, 10 Short-toed
Eagles, 7 Booted Eagles, 1 Black Kite, a Sparrowhawk, Hobby and 2 Kestrel.
Honey Buzzard
Honey Buzzard
Griffon Vulture
Griffon Vulture
Short-toed Eagle
Booted Eagle (pale morph)
This was my
first visit to Tarifa in the Spring, and I now understand why people rave about
the Spring passage. In the Autumn, you see the numbers of raptors, but as they
are crossing north to south, they tend to be high up and going higher still, to
be able to cross over. But in the
Spring, there may be less, but they are high up on the other side. By the time they get to the Spanish coast
they have dropped right down, and you get a chance to see them face to face, or
even from above!
As we were
staying in Barbate, we finished raptor watching at about 15:30 and made our way
over to La Janda. We wanted to have a
quick look there, even though we had been told it was very quiet as everywhere
was so dry. We took the normal track,
but in the end had to stop and turn around as the ruts in the track were so big
they could have done damage to the car.
We saw quite a few birds there but nothing too out of the ordinary (in
fact for me, the best birds were probably Woodchat, Turtle Dove and Pheasant).
The commonest bird in La Janda, Cattle Egret
Not a difficult bird to see, Purple Swamphen
Finally, to
end our day we thought we’d have a look at the Sierra de la Plata. But we were going there from memory, and in
the end even though we got onto the Sierra, we’d entered from the wrong side
and ended up at an urbanization and the lighthouse. But little did we know, this did us a favour,
as looking at the hirundines flying around in a small group, there were House
Martins, Red-rumped Swallows, a single Alpine Swift up high, 15 or so Common
Swift, and what was that with a white rump - a White-rumped Swift! My first one ever. They were all moving around quite a bit so we
tried to gain some height to see them all better, but in the end lost sight of
them all. Still, a few seconds view of
White-rumped Swift is better than no view at all. And now we’d both had a lifer each, so it was
time to go into town and celebrate!
Saturday
morning the promised winds had arrived, so there was no point in going back to
Tarifa, so we thought we’d go for another of the area specialities, Bald Ibis
at Barca de Vejer. This was easy enough
(once we knew where to look), and we were soon watching a pair with 2 young in
their cave. The number is well down on
previous years due apparently to the activity of a Polecat! Other birds seen in
the area were White Stork, Raven, Jackdaw, Crag Martin and Cetti’s Warbler.
White Stork
Bald Ibis with young
On our way
back towards Barbate, we decided to call in once again at La Janda, this time
from the western end. Here some of the
rice paddies had been prepared and some even had some water in. Where there is water there is birdlife, and here
we had Black Kites, Glossy Ibises, Black-winged Stilts, White Storks, Kestrels,
Booted Eagle and of course, the Cattle Egrets (which were the commonest birds
in La Janda).
As we were a
bit tight for time, we didn’t stay too long in La Janda, preferring instead to
try Sierra de la Plata once again - this time from the other side. We stayed here for about an hour, where we
saw about 15 distant Honey Buzzards (and a couple of close ones), 5 Kestrel, 4
Griffon Vultures, 1 Black Kite and about 20 Swift/Pallid Swift, but none with
the white rumps!
View from La Cueva del Moro over Bolonia
Griffon Vulture from the lookout point
By now it
was getting on for lunchtime, which we spent at a beautiful out of the way
place (well worth a visit) called Palomar de La Breña (which apart from the landscape,
has breeding Lesser Kestrels in the roof).
On our way there, we almost bumped into a baby Hoopoe obviously very
recently out of the nest. The rest of
the afternoon was taken up with non-birding activities!
Juvenile Hoopoe, blocking our way to lunch!
Palomar de La Breña
On the Sunday,
with the wind still blowing, and our chances of any decent sightings being
limited, we decided to go for one last look at La Janda, and then work our way
up to Chipiona for lunch, and hopefully another new species for me, Little
Swift (having missed them on several occasions in Tarifa).
This time at
La Janda we managed to get as far as the Pheasant farm and to the ‘dehesa’ area
round the back, and so had some different birds than before, but even so,
things were pretty quiet. We had
Spoonbills, Glossy Ibises, Black Kites, a couple of Honey Buzzards struggling
against the wind, Griffon Vulture, Bee-eaters, Corn Buntings and Stonechats,
but by far the most numerous birds were the Cattle Egrets, which were nesting
at the side of the track.
Cattle Egrets at the side of the track
Black Kite
Spoonbill
From La
Janda we made our way via Medina (where we had our one and only Egyptian
Vulture) and Jerez de la Frontera (Black-eared Wheatear, 7 Montagu’s Harriers
in a field, and 15 Gull-billed Terns) arriving at Chipiona mid-afternoon.
Making our way to Chipiona, this Egyptian Vulture flew over us at Medina
Our first action was to grab some lunch while
the street restaurants were still open, and then we went in search of the
Swifts.
From our
restaurant we walked along the seafront south to the lighthouse, and then east,
but somehow it didn’t feel right - we weren’t seeing hardly any hirundines or
swifts at all. So we retraced our steps
and headed north from the lighthouse, into town. Here we had some luck in that there were
large groups of house martins and swifts racing around, and it wasn’t long
before we saw our first ones with white rumps and ‘flat’ tails. Wanting to get better views, we wandered over
quite a bit of the town, but it wasn’t until we decided to come back to the
port that we finally found them and in numbers.
Up to 15 of them, they appeared to be nesting in the eaves of the fish
market on the port, and we spent a good hour watching and me photographing them
(but typical swifts, out of several hundred photos taken, there were only about
10 that I was pleased with).
Chipiona fish market - with Little Swifts
Little Swifts
And that was
it - now just a matter of a 6 hour drive home (but at least the roads were
clear as it was the final day of ‘La Liga’ so everyone was glued to a TV!).
