Too many highlights to list now (a report may follow when I get round to it) but the highlight has to be on Tuesday (16th) when after spending most of the morning walking the hills in search of passerines I found myself by our pool chilling out with a book (Kingbird Highway) when I clocked what looked like a circle of Honey Buzzards overhead.........a look through the bins (which never left my side) confirmed this.
Then 2 more appeared, then 4 more, then I looked around and there was 12 spiralling overhead, with a line of over 20 heading my way.
In 90 minutes from 16:30 til 18:00 I counted over 250 Honey Buzzard, obviously on passage and presumably using the ridgelines of the Sierra de Las Nieves/Serrania de Ronda and the hills North of our villa (Sierra Salinas?) to travel along........and our villa was right below their chosen flightpath !
During the week we'd had plenty of Booted Eagle, Raven, Griffon Vulture and the odd ST Eagle over the pool every day (so much so even the non-birding wife could recognise the ravens from their cronks and the Booted Eagle from their landing lights) but at one point I had all the above plus half a dozen Honey Buzzard and a couple of Black Kite in a small spiral literally overhead, all while I was there laid on my back on the sunlounger in nowt but a pair of shorts - a great sight for me but perhaps not such a pretty sight for them!
I was buzzing when we went for a bite to eat/drink that night but what made this all the more amazing was the fact that that little patch of sky I could see from our villa had that many Honey Buzzard through it in such a short space of time, not to mention that ones that slipped by while my bins were aimed on others.....must have been 10s of 1000s on the move over Europe?