Friday 31 August, partly cloudy, fresh E wind, 26C:
As mentioned in Wingspanner's post, last night saw the worst forest fire on the Costa del Sol for many years centred around Coin and Ojen just north of Marbella. In Gaucin at midnight we could see an orange glow from behind the hills to the east but assumed it was just a small fire somewhere along the Genal valley. At 0300hrs we woke to the smell of smoke and were shocked to see that Gaucin was completely shrouded in smoke - we are currently looking after a friend's house in the countryside and it was quite disconcerting not knowing how close the fire was and we seriously considered leaving the house and taking the cats and dog up to the relative safety of Gaucin village. In the end we decided to stay put, as we couldn't see any flames, but we didn't sleep much for the rest of the night and were continually checking outside to make sure we were safe! As the sun rose through the smoke layer it, like the almost full moon the night before, was a stunning blood red. The images of the fire on Spanish TV during the morning were quite shocking.

Anyway, back to the birds...
0800hrs: a walk along the Camino de Avedin produced a female Comon Redstart, Pied Flycatcher, Crested Tit and a Firecrest. There was some raptor passage noted this afternoon with small numbers of, mainly, Honey Buzzard and Black Kite moving N-S over the village:
1800hrs: 4 Honey Buzzard, 4 Black Kite, 1 Common Buzzard
1900hrs: 8 Honey Buzzard
1930hrs: 3 Honey Buzzard
2000hrs: 6 Honey Buzzard