You may remember back in November, Jules Sykes ran a competition to guess the 199th and 200th species he would see on his local patch in Oliva in the east of Spain. I was lucky enough to win courtesy of a Common Crane and a Hawfinch, plus some generous interpretation of his own rules by Jules (I actually got the 199th and 201st with a Snow Bunting creeping in to try and spoil things).
The prize was four nights at Jules and Amandas B&B in Oliva with three days guided birding by Jules, and what a fabulous prize it turned out to be!
Anyway, the dates were arranged and the 8th April found myself and my wife Maria being picked up by Jules at Alicante airport (rather bleary eyed after a 4am start). After getting us settled in at their comfortable B&B (our room was nicely scented by the orange groves it overlooked), later that afternoon Jules took us for our first look around Pego marsh. Not ten minutes from the house, Jules’ local patch is an extensive area of reedbed and flooded grassland surrounded by rice paddy. What me, jealous? Three hours passed quickly and threw up around 45 species including, Peregrine (from the house), Sardinian Warbler, Serin, Black-winged Stilt, Yellow Wagtail, Red Crested Pochard, Wood Sandpiper, Marsh Harrier, Little, Cattle & Great White Egrets, Purple Heron, Crested Lark, Little Ringed Plover, Red Rumped Swallow, Water Pipit, Spotless Starling, Zitting Cisticola, Garganey, Whinchat, Sand Martin, Hoopoe, Common Snipe, Audouin’s Gull, Yellow Legged Gull, Whiskered Tern and Tree Sparrow.
In addition we heard Great Reed, European Reed & Savi’s Warblers but as it was rather windy all were keeping well down out of sight in the reeds. Jules also spotted a distant Moustached Warbler ( a Pego speciality) but it dropped out of sight before we could get a scope on it. As I’d not seen moustached before, Jules assured me that we’d get better views before our trip was over.
A great start to whet our apetites for the rest of the trip!