Bird Nerds: Los Lances & La Janda

27 October 2011

Los Lances & La Janda

Before heading over to La Janda we decided to turn off at Los Lances to see if we'd be lucky enough to spot some Oyster Catchers.

Spanish Sparrows at La Janda

Unfortunately, we weren't able to see any on this occasion, but we did manage to see the following birds there:

Sanderlings
Little Stint
Godwit
Ringed Plover
Sandwich Tern

We then drove directly to La Janda, and despite having the car motor running we could still hear some cranes nearby. All of a sudden, there were about twenty to thirty Cranes flying over the car! We assumned that the sudden drop in temperature and the recent heavy rain had brought them over a lot earlier than previous years.

Cranes

Following that sighting, we scanned the fields but we weren't able to spot anything of genuine interest. We met up with a really nice German couple who were also birdwatching in the area and we stopped off to chat to them for a while. They told us that they had seen a Crake and some Black Storks by the canal. We had already visited that area but we hadn't managed to spot either bird, although we did see a Black Stork later on in the day.

Stone Chat

We did catch a sight of a Purple Heron that was feeding on fish and fortunately, we captured some nice photos.

Purple Heron

Later on in the day we bumped into Stephen Daly (of Andalucian Guides) and together, we spotted a Montagu's Harrier. There was another Harrier alongside and Stephen explained to us that this was a Pallid Harrier, going on to explain the different wing shapes, and why this particular bird was attracted to this kind of habitat.