Around this time every year, we start to notice the disappearance of our winter migrants, as they take off for more northern climes. Those who leave us include Bluethroats, Black-tailed Godwits, and Grey Plovers.
On the plus side, our summer visitors have been streaming across the Straights of Gibraltar for the last two weeks; White and Black Storks, Black Kites, Egyptian Vultures, Booted Eagles (although some are resident).
We will soon see the arrival already of the House Martins from Africa and then the Common Swifts who travel 20,000 kms every year. Unusually, they have a double stop over. From Spain they head first to the border region between the DRC and Cameroon before later moving onto the coastal regions of Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. The return trip starts in March and takes up to three months for these aerial acrobats to arrive back in May!
One of the most eagerly awaited returnees are the Bee-Eaters, coming in late near the end of April. Not far from us is a famous location to view their feeding and daytime
performances, locally known as Monastery Road. Here you can sit all day watching them drop off the telephone wires, down into the fields catching bugs. Joining them at this location are Eurasian Rollers, Little Owls, a Kestrel pair, Hoopoe and many flyover Egrets, Glossy Ibis and the like.
Another loss in March, is the return of Osprey to Northern and Central European regions. The majority fly back from Morocco, Guinea, Gambia and Senegal. I was fortunate to be a small part of the now famous #Glen, who hitched a ride on a boat during some of his first trip south! He was flying around a dense wooded area in Galicia, northern Spain. His tracker was operating fine but we wanted a sighting of course. A friend I knew up that way, Eugenio, said he would drive the 2 to 3 hours to see if he could find him. What a star. No luck, too wooded an area. Glenn then started to head south and his tracker stopped working at a fruit farm. Eugenio asked the local police to visit & look for him but nothing was found. Days later, the tracker on Glen started to send signals back. He had not gone down at the farm and has flow west, out over the Atlantic before coming back in to the Sado reserve in southern Portugal. What a relief to all of us following this young birds progress. Subsequently he has been leisurely feeding in Morocco in a small area. Who knows what will happen on his return trip next year? First year Osprey don't usually return until in their second year.
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