Sunday,
24th.
Having
spent 2 days up the mountain in not such good weather we decided on a change of
scenery and headed to Fuente de Piedra.
We drove down the motorway towards Malaga, cutting across country at
Aquiler, via Puente Genil. A change of junctions had us heading down the wrong
road but a dodgy sign got us there along the dirt track along the side of the
embalse, seeing a flock of 40 little bustards fly up from a field and over the
road and stopping a couple of times to scan the lake. DW heard cranes and a
flock was seen flying up and heading away. More cranes could be seen in a field on
the other side of the lake.
We
visited the centre and then went out for a stroll. There were 1000s of
flamingos dotted about with several hundred Black-necked grebes, shoveler, some
coot. In the pools we found Black-winged stilts, a black-tailed godwit and a
ruff. The bushes were alive with chiff-chaffs.
Returning
to the visitors centre DW went to check out some hides which proved to be a
good choice. From the 1) .... De Lagunato he found wh-headed duck, gadwall,
coot and from the 2).... He found a
wryneck. Slurping ants from the ground. It seemed to clean up what was there
and fly into cover for about 15minutes then return to slurp some more.
As I was
leaving the hide to try and let CP and PL know about the duck, a very
unexpected Grt Spotted cuckoo flew past me and glided into the bushes never to
be seen again.
We spent
the rest of the afternoon watching from these hides as hoopoe, chiff-chaff and
blk redstart entertained us, the highlight being the appearance of 2 mongeese
which were hunting along the backside.
We
retraced our steps back to LP as the sun set leaving a very vivid sky. We had
ordered a paella for dinner which was excellent. We were presented with a bottle
of 'limonella' liqueur. Very fresh lemon taste with a kick. Eventually we tore
ourselves away and went to bed.
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