ππͺπΈ Friday, November 12th π 20C ~ With Dazza working today I thought I'd take the opportunity to spend the morning at Zapata and in particular checking out the reedbeds which run adjacent to the airport perimeter road. During our visit on Wednesday, we failed to locate a few of our target species: Bluethroat, Penduline Tit and Stone Curlew.
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| Penduline Tit ~ A brief rest bite before disappearing once more out of sight. |
Sometimes it pays off to simply sit and watch for movement in the reeds or if you can find an area of bullrush lookout for the floating seeds as they are plucked out by
Penduline Tits. After an hour of doing just that it was actually the fine whistled call that alerted me to a single bird that appeared in the reeds just below my position.
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| Bluethroat ~ after several walks up and down the reeds one is finally located. |
One of my target species located and next to the
Bluethroat which I'd actually heard a few times during the morning, its unmistakable dry throaty clicking deep within the reeds. Finally, having the patience of a saint and at one time even being completely distracted by an
Egyptian Mongoose, a European first for me I finally connected with a
Bluethroat.
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| My 1st ever Mongoose in Iberia. |
Such is the case of the
Egyptian mongoose, which is native to North Africa but is also found in Spain and Portugal. It has, though, no pre-human fossil record in Iberia, and would be incapable of swimming across the Strait of Gibraltar. So the evidence points to it having been carried there by human agency.
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| Blue Rock Thrush ~ My 2nd for Zapata |
An excellent morning thus far and from here a leisurely walk back to the car checking out the surrounding scrubland for
Stone Curlew but without success. On New Years Eve 2019 I recorded a
Blue Rock Thrush here, obviously, a wintering bird coming down from the mountains for the duration and today another, almost in the exact same location! Other Species of Note today:
Common Buzzard,
Black Kite,
Black Redstart,
Stonechat,
Serin,
Common Waxbill,
Chiffchaff,
Greenshank,
Kingfisher, Little Egret,
Hoopoe and
Skylark.
More Images of the Day...
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| Bluethroat |
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| Bluethroat |
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| Common Waxbill |
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| Penduline Tit |
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| Black Kite |
