Wednesday 04 April, Los Lances beach, Tarifa; La Janda; Marismas de Barbate, cloudy am, mostly sunny pm, light SW wind, 13-17C: I joined Wingspanner and two of his clients, Steve and Sue, on day 4 of one of his Andalucia 5-day tours. We started with a quick stop at a sand quarry near Castellar de la Frontera to see if the Bee-eaters had arrived back at a large nesting site... they hadn't but we did see a few in the area, plus several Black Kite, Booted Eagle and Griffon Vulture. Stopping at a road bridge near Estacion San Roque we saw about 12 Lesser Kestrel in and around their nest holes.

We then drove on to Los Lances beach near Tarifa where an unusually high tide had changed the habitat a little but still managed to see on the dunes/sea Sanderling, Grey Plover, Yellow-legged Gull, Audouin's Gull, Mediterranean Gull, Lesser black-backed Gull, Sandwich Tern and Little Tern; in the fields we saw Short-toed Lark, Meadow Pipit, Yellow Wagtail, Kentish Plover, Barn Swallow, House Sparrow, House Martin, male and female Northern Wheatear, Dunlin, Little Egret, Cattle Egret, Collared Dove, Zitting Cisticola, Goldfinch, Serin, Corn Bunting, Linnet, Spotless Starling and Crested Lark.

It was a little windy on the coast so we soon headed off to La Janda, between Tarifa and Vejer de la Frontera, where the sun eventually began to break through the clouds; here we had some good sightings...Common Swift, Pallid Swift, Alpine Swift, 5 Short-eared Owl roosting in an olive tree, Spoonbill, Common Kestrel, Common Buzzard, Montagu's Harrier, Marsh Harrier, Black Kite, Griffon Vulture, Short-toed Eagle, Booted Eagle, Black-winged Kite, Black-crowned Night Heron, Grey Heron, White Stork, Red-legged Partridge, Common Pheasant, Blackcap, Common Magpie (not so common here in southern Spain!), Jackdaw, Raven, several Purple Swamp Hen, Little Grebe, Mallard, Moorhen, Blackbird, Greenfinch, Hoopoe, Woodchat Shrike, Calandra Lark, Nightingale (heard), Great Cormorant, Cetti's Warbler (heard), Sardinian Warbler and Wood Pigeon. We had hoped to see a Spanish Imperial Eagle at La Janda but for the first time in several visits they eluded us!

Finally we moved on to Las Marismas de Barbate, just outside Vejer, where the highlights were Black-winged Stilt (see photo), Little-ringed Plover and Red-rumped Swallow.
Ruff, Wood Sandpiper, Glossy Ibis (see photo of bird behind the wire fence),

On our drive back along the coast towards Tarifa Steve spotted four Glossy Ibis in a field beside the road...as that was a strange place for them to be we went back for a closer look and found them to be Bald Ibis (see photo - this one was from the reintroduction programme that has introduced birds from NW Morocco). Further along the road we saw a further 22 in flight.

A great day's birding with 70 species seen and another 2 heard.