Birding in Southern Spain

FIVE FANTASTIC DAYS OF WILDLIFE
Southern Spain - Friday 2nd to Tuesday 6th February 2018.


The four of us had five long days of birding having travelled from our home destinations on 1st February and returned after out last day. We could have stayed for longer as there are vast areas to travel through and see wildlife. To be fully cognizant of the size of Southern Spain it has to be visited to understand the enormity of it. Some of our journeys undertaken will mention times and distances and one has to be prepared for it. There are towns with facilities, but a full tank of fuel is recommended together with personal provisions.

One of us, Bryan, had some knowledge of the area when he visited in June, 2017 and all of us are used to searching out and finding our way around. However guided days can be advantageous because local knowledge, in my mind, reigns supreme. To be more pointed it is the best choice, in that it saves time, and effort, and the reward of seeing more species speaks for itself. For our first three days we guided ourselves and we had an impressive list by the end of day three, but that was with some advice. We decided to have a guided day because we would know by then what we still needed to see and we knew that a local person would know where to find the target birds. He did know too. The fourth day we were driven by Laury Grenon and taken to areas, including a restricted one, that we would have been unlikely to find for ourselves and we would not have had time to see all the habitats that we covered in that day.

We researched Doñana, but the truth is that we only touched the north-west tip of it at El Rocio
and the Jose Valverde Information Centre. We stayed at Mazagón and birded along the coastal strip. A journey into Portugal was interesting and our other main area was in the Biosphere Reserve of Marismas de Odiel and around the port of Huelva with Laury.

We did not anticipate the low temperatures and on these days it was said to be the coldest part of the winter. There was some rain, mostly sunny, but with one day predominately cloudy and on all days a cold wind blew. Warm clothes and with ones that can keep the wind out should be taken. Wooly hats and gloves too.

My final advice is, if knowledge of the area is limited, your time is at a premium and your knowledge of birds could be better then a search for local guides and to contact them to see what they can offer. There is a restricted area of Doñana Parque Natural where a guide must be taken and is where El Lince (Lynx) can be seen, but be warned it is forbidden to leave the vehicle and that also applied to a small part of our day with Laury.

We always have a map. A 578 Regional España Sur - Andalucía Where 1cm equals 4km. A SatNav is essential and GPS is valuable if accessed when traveling. Laury’s website is very good and can be viewed on http://www.andalucianaturetrips.com and it will point the viewer to Google Maps which are far more detailed than paper ones.

The decision for a winter visit was to see the wildfowl and resident wintering birds. We did see birds going north and the migration has started. Obviously the forthcoming months will reveal others and different results can be achieved. We are anticipating another visit in May!