September 14th
With the chaps also staying out in Spain close by at the same time, Mart, Paul and Lee, we had arranged a day out birding on the itinerary above, Torcel, Chorro and Fuente De Piedra visiting in that order.
They picked me up pre-dawn, the idea being to get there before the crowds and have a good walk round. Having previously visited here a couple of times, I knew it held some good birds and Spanish specialities.
Around an hour driving from La Cala, we arrived at dawn, however we couldn’t see a thing as we hit cloud/fog on the way up the mountains. Black Redstarts were present in the Car Park near the centre, but it soon became clear that it was not going to clear.
Driving back down the mountain eventually produced visibility and we started to pick up birds, all a bit distant but good to see the following.
Black Wheatear, 2 Rock Bunting, 3 Rock Sparrows, Blue Rock Thrush, 4 Stonechat and various others. I also got the best views of Spanish Ibex I have had, and we also picked up Red Deer closely.
From here we then made our way heading towards El Chorro, good birds seen along the way included Crag Martin, Booted Eagle, Bonelli’s Eagle,Crossbill,20 odd Chough and a flock of around 50 Bee Eaters en route.
Moving onto El Chorro was a bit time consuming, entirely my fault as I couldn’t remember where I had gone previously on my visit with Louis back in September 2017. We eventually arrived at a place I recognised, all thanks to Lee who did a sterling job of getting us from A to B throughout the day on the Spanish roads.
As we arrived at the watchpoint, it soon became clear that this was a Griffon Vulture flythrough route up against the mountain. We kept a careful out for Ruppel’s but no luck, however we all got really good views of Griffons, which probably numbered around 40+ birds of this massive raptor.
We also picked up Black Kite and Booted Eagle high overhead but no Bonelli’s Eagles, 2 were previously seen at this venue in 2017. A bit of a disappointment in what was seen, despite visiting and recognizing this watchpoint before definitely, I had a sneaking suspicion that it was not the same area I visited back in 2017, if that makes sense.
Time was moving on and food was calling, so we visited a local town and enjoyed a cold beer and some fantastic Tapas, before then heading for our final destination – Fuente De Piedra.
I had talked this place up to Paul due to our last visit with myself, Mart and Lee, the birding we had back then in 2019 was fantastic and one of those days you never forget.
However back then it had the magic ingredient – water, we arrived to find a majority of it dried up other than some very distant remaining floods on the main lake, which we could see held Greater Flamingo’s amongst others.
We decided to walk and try and get better views, on the way we had a male Goshawk, and a Spotted Flycatcher and a couple of fields held around 4 Crested Lark.
We then checked the remaining water area, lots of Greater Flamingo’s and Lesser Black Backed Gulls, in amongst these were various waders. Views were still distant, and a heat haze wasn’t helping but we picked up Ruff, Little Ringed Plover, Avocet, Snipe, Black Winged Stilt, Greenshank, Redshank, Spotted Redshank, Kentish Plover and some smaller waders could have been Little Stint.
El Chorro Walk
A dried up Fuente de Piedra
Distant Greater Flamingos
Bee Eaters
El Chorro
Griffons
Booted Eagle
Greater Flamingos
Crested Lark
Presumably a Lesser Kestrel/Roller Tower
Booted Eagle was again seen as was 2 Raven earlier, with water levels like last time it would have been a different story no doubt, especially on the Pool on the left as you drive in where we saw a lot of birds last time ,this was bone dry.
All in all, though, a great day out again with the boys, thanks to Paul for the driving, easy birding with my mates and always thoroughly enjoyable and great company.
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