Birdwatching in Straits of Gibraltar & La Janda (1 Viewer)

The new Migres site is not open yet and the new observation area at Punta Camora is yet to be open.However good views can be obtained from the area across the straits.....Eddy.

I'll be back at the end of next month to see, Eddy. See you then.

Can someone please tell me the precise details of how to get to the Facinas observation point? I drove around this area looking last year but failed to pinpoint it.

Are there any other sites that folk would recommend for autumn migration watching?

Alf King said:

Can someone please tell me the precise details of how to get to the Facinas observation point? I drove around this area looking last year but failed to pinpoint it.

Are there any other sites that folk would recommend for autumn migration watching?

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It's c2.5 north of the turning for Bolonia up a very rough track that climbs up from a bust stop opposite the turning for Facinas. It's surrounded by wind generators so I'm not sure it's worth it.

As for other sites, see my notes and blog, Alf. You can see good movement pretty much anywhere along the Tarifa coastline!

Thanks John. I've now managed to find it via the Migres web site, despite my very rudimentary Spanish.

Desperately trying to find somewhere that might be anywhere as good and accommodating as Cazella. I've always found Trafico to be good but it is a tricky drive with very little space for more than a couple of cars. I'll also try to pick the brains of the guys on the Andalucia stand at the Bird Fair.

Alf King said:

Thanks John. I've now managed to find it via the Migres web site, despite my very rudimentary Spanish.

Desperately trying to find somewhere that might be anywhere as good and accommodating as Cazella. I've always found Trafico to be good but it is a tricky drive with very little space for more than a couple of cars. I'll also try to pick the brains of the guys on the Andalucia stand at the Bird Fair.

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I don't find Trafico at all difficult - it's Algarrobo I hate turning into! You might find Trafico less problematical now that you can drive down to the watchpoint on the coast itself the old site doesn't seem to get so crowded. You could also try Guadalmesi now that you can drive there (or so I'm told I've not tried it yet),

John

Great and thanks again John. Time for me to reread your guide in preparation - just five weeks to go.

I'll certainly keep an eye out for that 'bust' stop John

Am trawling for cheapo fares 2/3 week or 3/4 of Sep for 5 days @ Tarifa, 3 @Cadiz (never visited, just passed thru on a coach) and a return to Tarifa for 5 days finishing with a night in old Malaga.

Looking forward to a 2nd consecutive visit and pounding the habitat and watchpoints in the area. Hope to fit a face with a name this time and will be perusing the forum and posing questions prior to departure!

ATB Laurie:t:

rollingthunder said:

I'll certainly keep an eye out for that 'bust' stop John

Am trawling for cheapo fares 2/3 week or 3/4 of Sep for 5 days @ Tarifa, 3 @Cadiz (never visited, just passed thru on a coach) and a return to Tarifa for 5 days finishing with a night in old Malaga.

Looking forward to a 2nd consecutive visit and pounding the habitat and watchpoints in the area. Hope to fit a face with a name this time and will be perusing the forum and posing questions prior to departure!

ATB Laurie:t:

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Ooops! Something deeply Freudian going on there Laurie! Ask away either here or via PM/email,

Barred Wobbler said:

Well, that's the September trip booked. Arriving last weekend in August again.

A long, long time ago (c2000 - 2002) I had a rush of blood and knocked off a bunch of drawings using pastel pencils that I'd been given, based on the few bird photos I'd taken in the days before digital and my early attempts at digiscoping once I'd realised that I could take photos with my work's digital camera through my scope. The reason for those early digishots was actually to try to get material for drawings. The photos themselves were crap, but they served their purpose.

Then in 2002 I bought my own digital camera and soon, as results got better the photos took over and the drawings quickly fell by the wayside. It's about 7 years now since I did a pastel and apart from a few pen and inks I knocked out in 2009 I've not touched a drawing in years.

Stuck in the gloom today and failing to fight off boredom I decided to do a drawing based on a booted eagle I photographed at Tarifa a couple of years ago. So far I've just done the preliminary sketch and I might get around to getting the colour on over the next few days if the mood is still with me.

Here's the sketch. It's supposed to be that colour - it's in pencil on grey paper.

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After this drawing was lying almost finished for exactly four months I finally got myself into gear and finished it this morning. An eagle with the Tarifa hills.

EDIT. It's away at the framer's now.

Excellent work Alan you never fail to amaze me with your talent.I am very envious.....Eddy

After two standard afternoons on La Janda I decided to take some friends to the area in the early morning and we were not disappointed.Our first stop was the Osprey site on the A 381 motorway KM54 on the Barbate reservoir and we were there at 7.30 am.two young Ospreys were on the pylon and another was flying nearby.All three eventually flew back to the nest and then three others were seen hunting over the water nearby,six Ospreys seen at the same time, a record for me at this site.There are now 18 breeding pairs of Ospreys in Andalusia after their reintroduction a few years ago.
Also seen at this site Spoonbill,grey lag geese,grey heron,short toed eagle,barn and red rumped swallows,white rumped swift,which are now breeding in the area,common swift,shoveller and mallard ducks,cormorant and sardinian warbler.
We then went to La Janda entering from the Benalup end and saw glossy ibis,cattle and little egret,grey heron kestrel,white stork barn swallow and common swift, and after we crossed the bridge over the river Barbate we came to a rice paddy which has not been that successful and there are many open muddy areas and a 20 minute stop proved to be interesting with black winged stilt,little ringed and ringed plover,moorhen,adult and juvenile yellow wagtails,common and green sandpiper and six curlew sandpipers in transitional plumage which I normally only see in the winter.Marsh and montagues harriers were hunting over the rice paddies and house martins and zitting cisticola were in abundance.
Moving on to the Cañada that runs to Facinas more marsh and montagues harriers were seen together with little owl,jackdaw,short toed eagle black kites in good numbers,and towards the Facinas end short toed lark,crested lark and a black winged kite( a life bird for one of my friends).Juvenile and adult woodchat shrikes were on many fence wiresand corn bunting,goldfinch,linnet and stonechats were also seen.
We left the Cañada at Facinas and headed towards La janda proper stoping at the Apollo 11 for a very good bacon roll with cheese(thoroughly recommended).driving alonside the main canal a very keen eyed friend spotted a squacco heron at the side of a paddy and it turned out to be a juvenile bird not having gained the blue on it´s bill.Further down the track beeaters,turtle doves,cettis warblers were seen and near to the bridge another black winged kite obligingly sat on a wire and provided good photos.The cattle egret colony still has some birds on the nests together with a few glossy ibis.The road to the farm and the dehesa area passed it were unproductive as by this time 1300 the temperature had reached 39 C and nothing was moving.We turned back and followed the same route in reverse and did see many black kites making their way south with one booted eagle and several thousand white storks.These were accompanied by a helicopter which appeared to be filming and I later learned that a German study was following German white storks on their migration and a documentary film was being made.
At this time of the year with very high temperatures I can certainly recommend an early start as on La Janda a total of 39 species were seen as opposed to numbers in the teens later in the day.We are now entering the busy time for the post nuptual migration alpine swifts,rollers and the first honey buzzards have been seen together with 1000´s of black kites and white storks.I shall be at the various watch points over the next few weeks and I hope to meet any BF members who are in the area.Regards ....Eddy.

Birding the Straits of Gibraltar.

I forgot to post the photos....Eddy

I refer to my Post 612,and in particular to the poorly developed rice paddy on the left hand side of the Benalup road after the bridge over the Barbate river.I was there yesterday at 7.30 which here is about first light on a cloudy morning and in addition to the birds mentioned before I found little stint(3) wood sandpiper(6) and common snipe (2).This is an excellent place to spend some time and as I was trying to get a decent picture of a snipe I was there for over an hour but to no avail.
After La Janda I went to Cazalla to the main site where the metal gate is now open permenantly and Migres are migration counting every day.I spent an hour there and saw Griffon and Ruppell¨s vultures,black kite,booted and short toed eagles but with a strong westerly wind blowing the birds were quite high.
Then on to Algarrobo where Migres started counting on Monday and where there had been good numbers of raptors in the morning,1000+ black kite booted and short toed eagles and about 30 honey buzzards.I arrived at 2.30pm which is in the period I call "bird siesta time" and apart from a lone short toed eagle a sparrowhawk and 3 ravens nothing else was seen in the hour I spent there.Easterlies are forecast for today so this site might be more productive.Regards ....Eddy

Great news Eddy. Thanks for that. See you soon.

I spent the whole day at Algarrobo observation point Algeciras yesterday and although the low cloud and poor photographic conditions would have disuaded many I am glad I stayed.Altogether during the day 18,095 birds of prey were counted of these 14.430 were honey buzzards.It was spectacular and the most Egyptian vultures I have seen 159,together with Short toed eagles,booted eagles,great numbers of bee eaters,swallows,alpine common and pallid swifts,one black stork and the now regular appearance of a Rupell´s vulture made this the best day in my 20 odd years of migration watching.
Also reported as being seen on Saturday at La Janda a Saker falcon.The wind has changed since yesterday with westerlies coming through but I suspect that the migration will continue and Cazalla observation point could be the place to be today.
I shall be out again today and look forward to meeting any BF members who are down this way....Eddy

eddy the eagle said:

I spent the whole day at Algarrobo observation point Algeciras yesterday and although the low cloud and poor photographic conditions would have disuaded many I am glad I stayed.Altogether during the day 18,095 birds of prey were counted of these 14.430 were honey buzzards.It was spectacular and the most Egyptian vultures I have seen 159,together with Short toed eagles,booted eagles,great numbers of bee eaters,swallows,alpine common and pallid swifts,one black stork and the now regular appearance of a Rupell´s vulture made this the best day in my 20 odd years of migration watching.
Also reported as being seen on Saturday at La Janda a Saker falcon.The wind has changed since yesterday with westerlies coming through but I suspect that the migration will continue and Cazalla observation point could be the place to be today.
I shall be out again today and look forward to meeting any BF members who are down this way....Eddy

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I'm sure I'm not the only one turning green with envy on reading that Eddie, what a day you had (I was thinking i'd done well with 7 Honey Buzzards and a Common swift over my house yesterday - must try harder )

eddy the eagle said:

I shall be out again today and look forward to meeting any BF members who are down this way....Eddy

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I hope to be there next week Eddy, I shall look out for you at Cazalla.

:t:

eddy the eagle said:

I spent the whole day at Algarrobo observation point Algeciras yesterday and although the low cloud and poor photographic conditions would have disuaded many I am glad I stayed.Altogether during the day 18,095 birds of prey were counted of these 14.430 were honey buzzards.It was spectacular and the most Egyptian vultures I have seen 159,together with Short toed eagles,booted eagles,great numbers of bee eaters,swallows,alpine common and pallid swifts,one black stork and the now regular appearance of a Rupell´s vulture made this the best day in my 20 odd years of migration watching.
Also reported as being seen on Saturday at La Janda a Saker falcon.The wind has changed since yesterday with westerlies coming through but I suspect that the migration will continue and Cazalla observation point could be the place to be today.
I shall be out again today and look forward to meeting any BF members who are down this way....Eddy

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Hi Eddy. Much quieter today. As I was driving East past Tafifa mid afternoon yesterday the sky was full of birds, but a lot of the honeys were returning from the sea it seemed. The sun broke out as I passed from under the edge of the heavy cloud at Pelayo. I almost called in to Algarrobo, but I went back to the digs and photographed the honeys that weren't too high from the field by the gate.

I had about 100+ honeys congregating over our digs while I was outside having my breakfast today.

Showing my son the sights this morning. He's here for a week, but not remotely interested in anything with feathers. We called in briefly at Algarrobo at around 9.30, but it was very quiet, although sunny. So on to Cazalla where a few sparrowhawks went through under the clearing low cloud along with gathering numbers of short-toed eagles. On to the new Trafico until midday. Lots of booted and short-toed Eagles kettling with black kites overhead before heading out over the strait. Also a group of about 150 storks went off. Hardly saw a honey buzzard though, after the shenanigans of the last two days. They were streaming out over Algeciras on Sunday morning, even in low cloud and mist.

La Janda this afternoon was quiet. Maybe the two crop-spraying aircraft that were active there yesterday have reduced the dragonfly and grasshopper population temporarily., so not many harriers. Black shouldered kite on the irrigator south of the farm, but fewer lesser kestrels than I saw yesterday.

I'll be out and about tomorrow after I've dropped the family off at gib border, so we might bump.

Sitting in the garden under a seemingly empty blue sky. Ive just picked my bins up to look at a large and very noisy group of bee eaters and noticed a stream of thirty-odd honey buzzards, so high they looked like hay flies in the binoculars. They are still going though, but they are doing it at orbital altitude.