A Day at Donana
As mentioned in my last report, I had seriously underestimated the distances in Southern Spain so we got up stupidly early in order to make the drive to and spend a whole day at Donana, unfortunately hitting the unfamiliar Sevilla ring road at rushhour.:eek!:
Donana: what a place?!..........amazing, surreal landscape, fragile habitat, frustrating........... I'll try to explain.
The first week of October is not the ideal time for birds at Donana but having said that we did see some good birds and a couple of lifers too. Most of this vast reserve is inaccessible but there are extensive trails in the area of the visitor centre and it is here where we spent the morning. Azure-winged Magpies are everywhere. They're quite cool and very pretty birds, smaller than their Magpie cousins and very sociable and not at all timid. You can get quite close to them. Two Hoopoes were seen, one right next to the road, the other briefly in flight. A flock of about 20 Spoonbill were on one of the pools along with an assortment of commonish waders. Water levels were low. The usual Sardinian Warblers were in almost every other tree and a single Rock Thrush, looked like a youngster. Booted Eagles flew over now and again.
We'd booked one of the official tours for the afternoon. I was so looking forward to this, 4 hours in a 4X4 bus thingy, but it very soon became very apparent that this was NOT a birdwatching tour but rather a trip to see the various habitats. We start off along the beach but the vehicle is going soooo fast I cannot ID the birds on the vast and peopleless foreshore! There are plovers, gulls, terns but it is so frustrating........we are going so fast that they are just unidentifiable. If only he would stop and I could get my bins on them!:-C We do stop in the dunes to look at the tracks of lynx, lizards and others. Eventually I resign myself to this and tune myself into learning about this very fragile ecosystem; extensive, ever changing on the move dunes, a narrow strip of trees and grass which supports deer and cattle and a vast, I mean really vast salt marsh which is now dry but come the rains will be full of wintering ducks, geese and waders. We eventually reach the river, which at this point is pretty birdless, some distant White Storks, Audouins Gulls and a Marsh Harrier and about a billion crabs of various sizes on the riverside.
The return journey along the beach is speedy, again I am unable to ID the birds due to the speed but there are a lot of coastal birds. There is one last surprise in store, a Sandgrouse, probably Pintail seen on the way back to the visitor centre. Donana is an amazing place, protected from the relentless development of most of coastal Spain. It is rightly Spain's show piece nature reserve but oh how I wish I had had more time to study the birds.
