I spent the day with the most enthusiastic birder I have ever met. Mark Begg is from Livingstone and his total for this trip (so far) stands at 126 species with 12 lifers.
Today we headed for Bonete, Petrola, and Coral Rubio particularly to watch Great Bustard. We started very well when a Rock Sparrow hopped up. That was lifer and an easy one.
Larks were plentiful with a Calendra stationary on the ground. Later on there was another view with a singing, high flying Calendra Lark with both Great Crested and Thekla flying. Next were the Great Bustards which we watched for well over an hour from various points. We saw about ten in all with my best views ever.
I was amazed to find that there were so many lagoons as I had not been to here during the winter months. Locations were numerous culminating with the large one at Petrola. I won’t list all of the birds here but we saw two Ruff, Mark identified a Marble Teal and thanks to his great eyes and knowledge I was able to know all of everything. Prior to that, we saw two Black-bellied Sandgrouse fly, although we had heard them calling in other locations. Also we had two incredibly good views of a male and female Marsh Harrier flying and resting.
We started early arriving as the light was sufficient to see well. We stayed all morning. We enjoyed it and l would do it all again.
Our target for the afternoon was to visit a location where there should be Dupont’s Lark. We drew a total blank but there we saw two perched Mistle Thrush together with, four Blue Rock Thrush, on the rocks below.
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