Maigmó and Montnegre

On Thursday 20th September we decided to take a change of environment and head for the mountains and into the trees. We spent several wonderful hours amongst the pines and the birds.

Maigmó and Montnegre are only a few miles inland from Alicante and roughly 20 minutes from the airport. If you don't mind mountain roads the vantage points on the Maigmó range are definitely worth the effort reaching an altitude of 1296 metres.

It was wonderful to be in the cool of the morning, in a gentle breeze and in the quiet amongst the trees. Lower down there is traffic noise from AP7, but we were still able to hear the birds. Forest birds are more difficult to see and on our way up we heard Long Tailed, Crested, Great Tits and had very good views of Coal Tits all flying in and around the pines. A Firecrest called from somewhere without showing. Wood Larks were extremely vociferous and one perched in full view on an Almond Tree. We constantly heard Crossbills and eventually we had an excellent view of several. Calls from Iberian Green Woodpeckers were heard often and two Jays squabbled loudly. Serin and Goldfinches added to the woodland chorus. At one stage we had a flock of Chaffinches and with good individual sightings too.

Coal Tit

Crossbill

Woodlark

We visited both the vantage points. We watched the Red Squirrels dash up and down the trunk of a pine and we could see one was holding a Pine cone. We did see butterflies but these seem limited to Banded Graylings. Okay, there were some noticeable bird species absent, but the cold will bring in some others. Even at this height Barn Swallows were passing through.

Most of the birds were more evident at lower levels although this cannot ever be guaranteed as some times the better sightings are at height.

We returned to the main road and headed towards Tibi. It was our initial intention to carry on through for Montnegre, but we stopped at bridge over Rio Monnegre. Two grey Herons flew and the river banks contained both vegetation and birds. Sardinian Warblers were obvious, a Cetti's called and a Stonechat perched close by. A male Blackcap flew into a bush.

There were clouds of insects, not mosquitos, which may have benefited from the recent rain. The river flowed well, but with no depth. Bryan photographed beautiful demoiselles. This is one location that we will visit again.



Our stop here was fairly lengthy and with the temperature rising we decided that we had had the best of the day and headed for home.