Natural Selection

Cape Verde Sparrow (female)

We arrived on Friday afternoon. If we’d come without luggage we could have walked round to the hotel. I had a mooch around the grounds and saw Spanish Sparrows (also conspicuous at the airport), Cape Verde Sparrows and Spectacled Warblers (and Collared Doves). A gentle introduction.

Spectacled Warbler (female)

Before breakfast on Saturday we walked up to beach to see if there was water in Rabil lagoon. That may sound naive to anyone who knows the area, as following the rainy season it turned out it is basically a kilometre long lake!

A handful of Brown Boobies were putting on a good show fishing very close inshore. With global warming these are even turning up in Britain now, but they still feel very exotic to me.

After breakfast I returned up the beach, then walked along the lagoon edge back to the main road. Viewing was good in places, in others the trees on the banks were so lush you couldn’t get near without lacerating your legs (I know, I did). The trees were also extensively used for the massive webs of the similarly massive Golden Orb spiders.

A few waders were seen at either end of the lagoon. Kentish Plover were ubiquitous near the beach and inland at the road bridge. Several Greenshank were also at the beach end, and several Common Sandpipers inland.

Common Sandpiper

A young Spoonbill was inland of the bridge. The ages of Spoonbills can get quite complex but basically the pinkish bill and black in the wingtips mean it’s definitely not an adult, it may be a bird of the year.

The walk along the roadside back was enlivened by a couple of calling Quail, some Bar-headed Larks I will save for another blog and a Marsh Harrier that was hunting over the land around the airport runway.