Field diary

October 2005

1st - 7th October

Hirundines are still much in evidence. At least someone seems to be enjoying the Indian summer!

8th - 14th October

At long last the rain has come! Not in huge quantity yet but it is real wetting rain which the parched ground has needed desperately for so long. On Wednesday 15 litres per square metre fell in Orellana and the temperature has fallen to the seasonal norm of around 20-22°.

On Friday we saw the first Crane of the winter. Unusually for such gregarious birds it was alone in a rice field, but there are almost certainly others here too. Also we say the first small groups of Hen Harrier and Red Kite. Black-winged Kite and Black Stork are showing - there was a singlr Black Stork and a group of 4. Spanish Sparrow form enormous flocks in the winter and we saw several thousand in one flock milling about close to the road.

15th - 22nd October

Finally the seasons are re-asserting themselves and autumn is behaving like autumn! Light rains during the week and cooler temperatures were followed by torrential rain on the Saturday. About 60 litres per square metre (in other words, 6cms of rain) fell in one afternoon. This is very welcome indeed, and we hope that normal service will resume shortly.

Sure enough, coinciding with the heavy rains, the cranes have started to arrive en masse. A phone-call from Gallocanto on the Friday morning said that some 10,000 had left that morning. The 500km. flight is easily accomplished in the, and by late afternoon the sky was filled with the first waves, calling as they began to lose height.

23rd - 29th October

An excellent week with a lot moving. The crane numbers are building nicely, from around 8,000 at the start of the week. The flocks are nervous and difficult to approach, but as the weeks pass they will become accustomed to the normal goings-on in the fields and disregard vehicles over 100m or so away.

One exciting view while we watching a pair of Black Stork soaring high over the dehesa was the simultaneous appearance of a pair of Golden Eagle just above them.

Black shouldered Kite are now seen regularly in their territories. A late passage bird was a Cuckoo who flew along the canal in front of us for several hundred yards.

At the end of the week an extraordinary sight was a flock of over 300 Cormorant flying over the Orellana reservoir before landing on teh water and proceding to dive. Woe-betide the fish in the area with such a concentration of predators.