Leaving the mountains we dropped down to the plains with our guests from @naturetrektours Here our day was immense!! Respectfully we watched 27 Great Bustards with some males in full on foam bath display ! This was the #fieldofdreams as 8 Little Bustards also mingled in the #Bustardparty! A nearby field held 47 Black-bellied Sandgrouse too! Immense ! #GloriousBustards

From mountains, plains and wetlands we had awesome encounters here last week with our group! Plains with Great and Little #Bustards, a record number of Black-bellied #Sandgrouse (57! the highest count at this site ever!), wetlands among dancing Greater #Flamingoes and the high top mountains in the realm of Griffon and Eurasian Black Vultures, Golden and Bonelli´s #Eagles as Ring Ouzels popped in for a drink! #mountainbirding #FlywayBirding

A day of rain ☔️ in the mountains yesterday but that of course didn’t stop us having some fabulous encounters among the wooded valleys 😎 In the face Common Firecrests, Crested Tits, Hawfinch, Short-toed Treecreepers and more! #MountainBirding #FlywayBirding

Our first full day in the mountains of the Serranía de #Ronda with our guests was full emersion mountain #Birding! Iberian Grey #Shrikes, Black #Wheatears, Blue Rock #Thrushes and Rock #Bunting encounters with Griffon #Vultures a constant companion as Golden Eagles, Bonelli´s Eagles and the first of 2025 Black Kites soared overhead! We finished the day amongst a Choughnado! With masses of Red-billed #Chough noisily coming to roost! #MountainBirding #FlywayBirding

No visit to #Doñana is complete without a visit to the nearby Little Swift colony! Our group were right amongst the #Apus action as they left their roosts whilst we sampled arguably the best churros in #Spain! The #Salinas of Bonanza with Mediterranean Short-toed Larks, Slender-billed Gulls, Black-necked Grebes and Caspian Terns were a real treat as were the nearby pools with close-up White-headed #Ducks!

We’ve been having a blast in #Doñana with our group here. Overwintering Ospreys, Short-eared (9) and Barn Owls, White-headed #Ducks, Ferruginous Ducks, Little and Great Bitterns, Whiskered Tern and mighty Spanish Imperial Eagles just to name a few! #FlywayBirding

As we approach the imminent arrival of our guests to explore #Doñana we have been amongst some of the species they can expect on this tour this week. The now close to extirpated in Europe Red-knobbed #Coot and the subtly stunning Marbled #Duck, where we counted nearly 80😳of this species, almost the entire European population is now concentrated in #Spain where it is considered #criticallyendangered

A massive surprise this morning was hearing a very familiar call to us from our balcony! A 𝐏𝐈𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐖! Right across from our house in #Facinas! Kinda like we were back in The #Gambia ! With only a handful of genuine Moroccan records, this sub-Saharan species is still a major rarity in the Western Palearctic. With feather wear and staining consistent with a wild individual and given our proximity to Africa it should, in our opinion be considered as a genuine vagrant. #migratorypioneers #FlywayBirding #piedcrow #balconylist

@RissoRaymond Point taken Raymond but we were much closer to Algeciras although it also depends which map you use of course 😎☺️

Once again Little Buntings (pic) are overwintering at nearby La Janda with at least one Rustic Bunting present. These vagrant #Buntings usually breed in the open taiga, partly flooded forests and tundra of Russia and Northeastern #Scandinavia, wintering in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Their now seemingly annual occurrences certainly signal the steady expansion of their wintering ranges and perhaps The #Straits is becoming one of those pioneer important sites for these very welcome visitors 😎 #FlywayBirding #migratorypioneers

Records of Common #Eider in Southern #Spain and The #Straits are pretty scarce and so this long staying female near #Algeciras is still hanging out and a welcome addition to both our #2024 and #2025 sightings! #FlywayBirding

Niki and Simon wish to express our gratitude for all our guests in 2024 and those yet to come in 2025! Happy New Year everyone! When considering the colours of #Christmas it is hard not to be drawn back to the memories and colours of our annual #FlywayBirding trip to The Gambia - which is directly supporting habitat creation and protection at this important wintering point for so many #Birds that pass through The #Straits here. The colours of Christmas in Africa! Gold - African Golden Oriole! Green - One of the many Bee-eater species, the confiding Little Bee-eater Red - The Bearded Barbet Blue - Malachite Kingfisher And our gift - our renewed commitment to The Gambia Bird Watchers Association in creating new areas of Mangrove forest, cleaning up Kotu Creek and expanding the ability to take more boat trips into these areas for sustainable income generation. If you want to support our ongoing commitment to these valuable projects and enjoy fabulous #Birding and wildlife experiences then we can´t wait to welcome you to #Gambia this year!

@KarenFullerton2 @browntom1234 Check out our website

@KarenFullerton2 @browntom1234 Hey chic@s we live at the centre of #FlywayBirding here in The Straits of Gibraltar, Tarifa southern Spain - we work across that Flyway incl neighbouring Morocco & onto the sub-Saharan haunts of wintering Birds in The Gambia - we are stoked you enjoy the posts!

We have had so many interesting #nature encounters on our annual tour of The #Gambia! Encountering Green, Western Red Colobus and Common Patas Monkeys, rehabilitated Chimpanzees, Guinea Baboons and Hippos! The most surprising encounter was when this West African Banded Cobra suddenly poked it´s head out of a dead stump! #FlywayNature

Among the waterside gallery forests of the River #Gambia the shy and at times elusive Adamawa Turtle Dove can be encountered - and we did just that! It was first discovered in The Gambia only in 1990 and very little is known about the behaviour of their sporadic disjunct populations. During covid this forest was threatened with development - joint campaigning at the time by the Gambian Birdwatchers Association and Inglorious Bustards may have dissuaded further development in these beautiful gallery forests where the Adamawa now resides. #FlywayBirding

It is hard to try and summarise our annual epic trip to the other end of the flyway The #Gambia but here are just a few of our best highlights! Among everyone´s top encounters has to be the amazing snappily-plumaged Egyptian Plover. We had close encounters with 7 of these sought-after birds! The mystical sound of African Fish Eagles upriver accompanied our mornings as we found magical fruiting fig trees adorned with ornithological gems like this Bearded Barbet and Pearl-spotted Owlets coming to check out the avian party! We also encountered a diversity of Cuckoos, with this Levaillant's Cuckoo popping up in front of us! Our African Finfoot sightings record was smashed, with 8 beating the previous record of 7! Fancy a massive dose of ornithological colour, while supporting our ongoing conservation work in The Gambia and seeing real Africa? Then you'll definitely want to join us in 2025! #FlywayBirding Pics - Egyptian Plover, Pearl-spotted Owlet, Levaillant's Cuckoo and African Finfoot