For many of the birds I was hoping to see, I had planned my itinerary to give myself multiple “bites at the cherry”. However, the distances involved meant that the SE and NE legs had species that could not be seen elsewhere. So the pressure was mounting as I drove from Alcazar de San Juan to Elche, near Alicante. The must-see species at Elche was Western Olivaceous Warbler, but I was also targeting Pallid Swift, which is commoner on the coast than in the interior areas I would be spending most of my time, and Black Wheatear.
I have by now submitted all my non-UK and California bird records into ebird. This had revealed that a handful of my sightings from W Europe were incorrect. This included my only Western Olivaceous Warblers from Spain, which transpired to be from an area further north on the coast where they do not occur! I had also seen the species in Morocco, but given the faux pas in Spain, it wasn’t impossible that the Morocco record was incorrect too.
Upon arrival at Elche, I was happy to immediately see some swifts cruising along the lip of the canyon. The closest two proved to be Pallids and I had excellent views allowing full appreciation of the features that separate this species from the very similar Common Swift, such as the slightly milkier body plumage and more extensively pale head and throat with a dark eye patch. For good measure, I had nice comparative of a Common Swift that was clearly much darker in comparable lighting.
There were numerous trails down to the river bed below. I took one of these and headed over to the nearest group of tamarisks, which were intermixed with some arundo. I should mention that one can usually only get an approximate idea of where a particular bird is from ebird as most checklists involve covering some distance. In this particular case, I had looked at the photos of the warbler in several checklists and each picture showed the bird in a tamarisk. Based on that, I was confident that if checked about a kilometer of the river bed, I should be able to find one. Although I was birding at four in the afternoon, the wonders of playback soon had a bird singing back at the very first group of tamarisks I tried. I was able to see the bird well and was struck by the relatively large size for a warbler, as well as the long bill with a bright orange lower mandible. The generally cold pale brown plumage tones and square-ended tail further eliminated a Reed Warbler, which were also singing nearby.
Black Wheatear
After seeing the Western Olivaceous Warbler, I heard a Sardinian Warbler singing and soon had great looks at a smart male. It’s amazing how much easier to see this species is when singing compared to my previous visits to the W Mediterranean in late summer. Sylvia warblers are a smashing group and it almost felt like I was seeing a lifer, given the great views.
I now turned my attention to Black Wheatear. This is a species that requires vertical rock faces and had seen from prior study of Google maps that there was such a face on the west side of the canyon towards the road bridge. Wheatears are conspicuous by nature and it didn’t take long to locate a pair that proceeded to show well.
Having ‘cleaned up’ in Elche, I now headed down to Aguila to check into my hotel. Upon arrival there, I found the streets near the hotel were wall-to-wall with parked cars and there was no obvious sign of the claimed hotel parking. Rather than waste time parking a distance away and walking to the hotel to check-in, I decided to head out birding to the coast immediately north of Aguila. The ‘must-see’ bird here was Rufous-tailed Bush-Robin (Rufous-tailed Bushchat for the old-timers). I was also hoping to see Trumpeter Finch and Red-necked Nightjar.
Rufous-tailed Bush-Robin
After about 30 minutes of searching the low coastal scrub, I had good looks at a bush-robin that appeared to carrying food to a nest somewhere in the wash. Birding over the next kilometer or so along the coast produced a couple of more bush-robins, lots of Sardinian Warblers and several larks, one of which showed well in a bush and was clearly a Thekla. I was hanging around until sunset hoping to find a Red-necked Nightjar or two. This proved almost too easy as the nightjars became active shortly after dusk and I was able to see them well both in flight and on the ground. As well as the distinctive vocalizations, I could see the extensively spotted wing-coverts, a distinction from European Nightjar. I eventually managed to see a hint of the reddish hind-collar on one bird. All-in-all, I saw or heard at least four individuals.
By now it was 10.30 PM. Given the miss on Trumpeter Finch, I now needed to be at the best site for that species near Xixona in the early morning. This meant I would have to be out of the hotel by 5.00 AM or so. Since it was 20 minutes back to the hotel and the late night eating habits of the Spanish would mean the streets were probably still packed with cars, I decided to eat the hotel cost and drive to Xixona and sleep in the car on-site. This took a bitlonger than anticipated as Google Maps tried to take me down a rough track across the canyon that was certainly not drivable in the Fiat 500 I had rented. After eventually arriving at the correct spot, I found a spot to park for the night. Getting out of the car for a ‘nature break’, I immediately a distant Red-necked Nightjar. Even better was a calling European Scops Owl. Since, I didn’t anticipate sleeping all that much, I unloaded my night birding gear and after about 15 minutes, got great looks at the owl. At that point I wondered about whether I should try playback for Eagle Owl, which was the only remaining night bird target. I decided against this, a decision that would come back to bite me.
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