Doñana day

So, by now you would have got from me a certain love of our feather friends. Today was to be spent in bird paradise.

We are in Doñana. This is a national park in the south of Spain. It is on a river delta, the river Guadalquivir. There is lots of water here. Lots and lots. Certain birds love water. The wanders love it here.

Another thing about Doñana, Doñana is big. Really big. In many ways it is like where I grew up bird watching with my Grandfather, The Romney Marshes; lots of fields, this time growing rice, dykes, rivers and lakes. Lakes full of birds. My Grandfather would have loved it here.

How to describe how big it is. Well Dora doesn’t like Doñana. Too many unpaved roads. She handled them well though. We wanted to get to the middle bit. It was 60 kilometres driving around the outside and then it was 30 kilometres driving to the middle. 30 kilometres of unpaved road. Roads like this;

and then this;

and with scenery like this;

and this;

Then this;

Here we are talking really big skies. We would have taken a panoramic, it just wouldn’t fit in…much too big.

And then the water.

Lots of water.

As far as the eye could see.

So the one thing you won’t get in this post is photos of the birds. It just wouldn’t do them justice.

Just a description

Here are a few of my favourites;

The glossy ibis

An oversized curlew, with a green iridescent plumage. a bird that forgot to evolve, looks prehistoric.

The black winged stilt

The size of an avocet and similarly beautifully monochrome, except for its stupidly long orange legs and beak and then it flies with those legs flailing behind it like string.

The crane

Looks ungainly on land due to its size, could be mistaken for an ostrich and then it flies, magnificent. Makes herons look miniscule.

The stork

Always a firm favourite with me, from its size, to its precarious nests on electricity pylons, and the clack, clack, clack of its bill, its mating call-comical.

The great white egret

Pristine and grand.

The greater flamingo

We never really got to see these when we were in Africa, Tanzania on Lake Manyara. There was too much other wildlife to look at. Maybe as we flew away we imagined them below us. Incredibly, if we had have seen them we could have been looking at the same birds here, that is how far they travel. Whether swimming, wading or flying these are majestic, with that incredible subtle flash of colour. A wonder of the natural world. Birds that even Susana likes.

And then the raptors, the birds of prey. There was nothing new here; kestrel and buzzard mostly. It was just the sheer number. Ever 100m one on a post, hovering and circling above. And of all the birds, never have I been that close, and seen that much detail.

Paradise.

GDR