Just around the corner
AS I write, although it’s damn’ near freezing, you do get the feeling the spring is just around the corner.
My ever-vigilant friend Barry saw a red-rumped swallow, close to El Hondo – though, as ever with hirundines, it’s impossible to say whether the unseasonal bird was an early returning migrant, or an overwintering individual, that had stayed, and joined forces with the vast numbers of crag martins that feed over our wetlands all winter.
A few years ago, I recall a winter when no less than six house martins spent the entire season feeding over the ‘salt museum’ reserve at Santa Pola.
During the cold spell that persists as I write, birds have been quite hard to find, but Greta and Paul were fortunate to come across two black storks – notorious wanderers – close to San Fulgencio.
Almond blossom was already showing on January’s last day as I made my way to Lo Chicharro, where I climbed to the viewing platform to survey the vast reed-marshes of El Hondo.
A couple of marsh harriers quartered the nearby lagoon, but were then dwarfed as the first of two greater spotted eagles hove into view, lumbering into the cold air, before easing into ‘soaring mode.’
I watched as this adult was joined by a younger bird, reflecting upon our good fortune in having these great raptors as annual visitors from their nesting area in the Baltic.
For several years, ‘Tönn’ paid us an annual visit – he was an eagle that carried a radio transmitter, so that his flights to and from El Hondo from Estonia could be followed.
Sadly, he stopped transmitting a couple of years ago, and his fate is unknown. I continued from Lo Chicharro, down to the southern end of El Hondo, but the only migrants I saw were a few wintering lapwings and skylarks, until I came across a truly enormous flock of house sparrows.
As I was trying – with signal lack of success – to find a tree sparrow amongst them, the whole lot scattered, and then I saw the reason for this – a dashing female merlin had suddenly appeared on the scene.