Costa Blanca Bird Club Field Trip

Wednesday 14th January :- Today I was heading inland to meet my friends and colleagues of the CBBC for our first field trip of 2009 to the plains of Albacete. I was a nice day but bitterly cold with an icy wind moving through from the west. Incredibly 23 of us turned up and I lead the procession of cars off the highway towards Higueruela but our initial stops only produced a few Crested & Skylarks, Linnets, Southern Grey Shrike, Common Buzzard, Carrions Crows and Magpies. So a change of route saw us now heading towards Corral Rubio and in a known area by me, I found our first 9 Great Bustards - much to everyone's pleasure. However over the next hour and several more stops took our GB tally to 50+ birds an excellent total and some fantastic views from the roadside. We checked a few natural ponds were we saw plenty of Mallard, Shoveler and Eurasian Teal plus a few Pintail, Gadwall and a couple of Wigeon. Lapwings graced the edges and a female Marsh Harrier quartered the area. I took them out on to the farm tracks that dissect the huge fields of brilliant red and buff soil were we found a few flocks of Calandra Larks, and a Little Owl glared at us from a lone rock pile. Lunch was taken in Petrola at the excellent value bodega - El San Juan. After lunch we had a quick look at Petrola lagoon but it was fairly quiet with us ust adding Shelduck to the list so we returned to the tracks for a final flourish. Sandgrouse was our quarry and sure enough we managed to pick out 2 Pin tailed Sandgrouse amongst a small flock of Black bellied Sandgrouse, followed by a female Hen Harrier moving through - fantastic. It was now time to go our separate ways and on my way back I made a quick stop at another small pool finding a surprising Little Stint plus 2 Black winged Stilts, 10+ Common Snipe, Corn Buntings, Water & Meadow Pipits. A great day and an excellent evening as I celebrated my youngest son's 10th birthday with the family.