fishydreams

Bird watching is not rocket science. All you need is a notebook, a pair of binoculars and some kind of bird identification book.

Pippa and I reckoned that even a couple of morons like us could manage that. In the event we had no binoculars. I do actually own a pair have but they got drenched one time I took them fishing, and using them is like looking through a submarine periscope while the sub is still underwater, during the night.

When we were on our outward journey we realized that the notebook and pen were at home on the table, just beside the RSPB Complete Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe.

But at least we had a couple of cameras and we were headed to a place where there we had a reasonable shot of encountering a modest sample of the birds of Britain and Europe.

Bird watching is a serious business. The real pros take sandwiches and a flask of tea but we simply stopped en route and grabbed a café con leche and a pitufo at Café Europa, the legendary watering hole of the committed outdoorsman.

This turned out to be a smart move because the equally legendary resident parrot, Gregorio, was available for a close up photograph. His species, the African Grey, would have been the first to tick off our list, had we had the foresight to bring a pen and paper.

The destination for our adventure was the Paraje Natural Desembocadura del Guadalhorce and, rather than describe this fascinating wetland from scratch, I will shamelessly plagiarise a description given in a book “Dry River” which I heartily recommend to you. Here is what it says:

“The river at this point is not far from the city of Málaga where it splits into two parallel channels and disgorges its turbid water into the Mediterranean. These two arms, as they reach towards the sea, embrace a wetland which, for its limited size, is home to a surprising diversity of birds. There are spoonbills here, and egrets, flamingos, grebes, moorhens, white headed ducks and many others. Some, like the secretive purple gallinule, are rarely seen but, if you are lucky and patient, you might catch a glimpse of one as it emerges through a gap in the rushes carried by its skinny yellow legs and comical, outsize feet. The eastern border of this unlikely oasis is the industrial fringe of the city and, beyond the N340 dual carriageway to the north, is Málaga airport. Unperturbed by the drowning noises of jet engines the birds here busy themselves with their daily routines of feeding, preening and sleeping. Throughout, they remain curiously indifferent to the hollow metal birds whose shadows fall over them periodically, and whose bellies disgorge each day thousands of visitors who may have observed from the air, the glistening thread that sustains them, but will have paid it scant attention, thinking instead, of beaches and golf courses.”

Anyway, here are a few of the pictures we took today. All that remains for us crap bird watchers to do is to misidentify all of the birds!

Our first specimen was spotted as we were having breakfast.

Crap bird watchers

This has nothing to bird watching. It´s just a nice picture of Pippa.

The little reservoirs here are actually artificial. Excavations carried out about 30 years ago have since flooded and offer a great habitat to water birds.

There were cormorants everywhere. Cormorants are very good divers but their feathers are not waterproof and tend to get soaked. This is fine for swimming underwater but means the birds need to dry out their wings and are often seen with their wings half open.

There were cormorants wherever we looked.

Here they are chilling in the trees.

A moorhen.

In the distance we have a coot and a little closer a male shoveler duck. Male ducks tend to be more conspicuous and colourful to attract the females but the females tend to be better camouflaged which makes sense if you are sitting on eggs.

Black-winged stilts have, in proportion to their size, enormously long legs but they don´t have very long necks. So, even though they can wade out to a respectable depth, they feed on insects and stuff right in the surface film.

This is a cattle egret hitching a ride on a horse. They will often stand on horses and cattle!

This is a little egret and looks quite similar to the cattle egret. You can tell them apart by their feet (yellow in the little egret and black in the cattle egret) and by the colour of their beaks (yellow in cattle and dark in the little egret)

Little egrets are much more closely associated with water and are often to be found on the river. This one is standing right at one of the the two places that the Guadalhorce enters the sea.

A little egret hunting for some food.

The Guadalhorce River divides before it reaches the sea and so there are really two deltas separated by several hundred metres. Between them, there is a pretty stretch of beach.