After a particularly rock and roll New Years Eve, consisting of Toy Story 3, slippers and a bottle of Limoncello, we blew off the old cobwebs this week by exploring our new patch in the bright 2018 sunshine.
We’ve recently moved to the village of Facinas, just along the coast from our accommodation partners at Huerta Grande ecolodge, where we’ve spent a most enjoyable year being log cabin dwellers! Our new base is a pretty pueblo blancowith cobbled streets, which spills down the side of a rocky outcrop and overlooks the wetlands and low intensity farmland of La Janda.
Wandering up through the pastureland, passing the occasional herd of free-roving goats, sheep, cattle and donkeys beneath the shade of a mature Cork Oak tree, we also passed Cattle Egrets, Black Redstarts, Corn and Cirl Buntings, Sardinian Warblers and dozens of wintering Common Chiffchaffs.
About 20 minutes up the hill from our home, a spring, known locally as ´El Chorrito´, gushes out of the mountain. There´s almost always somebody there filling bottles with the pure water, and we took the chance to stop for a freshen-up there, watch the local Grey Wagtail and see Short-toed Treecreepers and Hawfinches moving through the trees.
As the Cork Oak forest became denser, we were in Los Alcornacales Parque Natural proper, and numerous Firecrests, Crested Tits and enthusiastically drumming Great Spotted Woodpeckers joined the avifauna. We could see Griffon Vultures circling overhead, having left their roosts on the rocks just up the hill. Even from this height we could hear the bubbling calls of the many thousands of Common Cranes wintering on the rice paddies of La Janda.
Another half hour up and we were watching European Nuthatch in the trees and Dartford Warblers darting through the scrubby clearings. And then, calling loudly, four Rock Buntings in the Stone Pines! Superb!
As we reached the very top of our bir of Monte Facinas, some 400m above sea level, there, sat on top of the very highest rocky pinnacle like a little blue glacé cherry on top of a celebratory New Year´s cake, was a male Blue Rock Thush singing its heart out to welcome in 2018!
It was a great start to the year, not only for the engaging selection of resident and wintering birds we saw, but also for the promise of those to come – in a few weeks this hillside will be stuffed with Western Bonelli´s Warblers, Iberian Chiffchaffs, Nightingales and Golden Orioles, and the skies full of Black Kites, Short-toed and Booted Eagles making their way north to populate Europe!
2018? Bring it on, please!
Let us show you our home! We still have a couple of places left for our Spring migration tour in March – please do contact us for more info or sign up to our free enewsletter to keep up to date with news from the Straits!
Reblogged this on Wolf's Birding and Bonsai Blog.