Best year yet for Loja / Granada Wildlife.
Third place in the bird category goes to Rufous-tailed Scrub Robin (Alzacola / Cercotrichas galactotes), locally a very rare species. We have just one site in the area but the birds showed well and posed beautifully for the Camera.
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Rufous-tailed Scrub Robin (Alzacola / Cercotrichas galactotes). |
In second came the stunning Little Swifts (Vencejo Moro / Apus affinis) which we saw during the very successful spring tour in Western Andalucia, these were a Spanish lifer (seen in UK and Morocco before).
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Little Swift (Vencejo Moro / Apus affinis). |
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Little Swift (Vencejo Moro / Apus affinis). |
Bird of the year for me was not actually a lifer but a rare and
difficult to see species which I spent a superb hour and a half watching
at Padul Wetland near Granada. This Baillon's Crake
(Polluela Chica / Porzana pusilla) performed in the smelly ditch and
showed down to less than a meter for a lot of the time, too close to
focus on.
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Baillon's Crake
(Polluela Chica / Porzana pusilla). |
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Baillon's Crake
(Polluela Chica / Porzana pusilla). |
Dargonflies featured well in 2014 with a couple of tour dedicated to the superb insects. In third came the stunning Orange-spotted Emerald (Oxygastra curtisii) with several insects being see during a tour at the end of May.
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Orange-spotted Emerald (Oxygastra curtisii). |
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Orange-spotted Emerald (Oxygastra curtisii). |
In second and I can not believe it's only in second came the amazing Splendid Cruiser (Macromia splendens) which lead Steve Jones and I a merry dance back in May. A super rare species which we were lucky enough to get some shots of after a lot of hard work.
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Splendid Cruiser (Macromia splendens). |
Top slot for the Dragons goes to a species I had heard of but never expected to see, the Green Hooktail (Paragomphus genei). Thanks must go to Fernando Enrique Navarrete for showing us this stunning species.
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Green Hooktail (Paragomphus genei). |
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Green Hooktail (Paragomphus genei). |
Several days tours also targeted Butterflies with some very interesting species being seen including.
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Apollo (Apolo / Parnassius apollo subsp nevadensis). |
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Provence Orange-tip (Anthocharis euphenoides). |
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Spanish Festoon (Zerynthia rumina). |
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Berger's Clouded Yellow (Colias de Berger / Colias alfacariensis). |
Orchids were also seen on several of the tours with a couple of dedicated multi-day tours going further afield in to Malaga and Cadiz Provinces.
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Dark Spider Orchid (Ophrys incubacea). |
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Man Orchid (Orchis anthropophora). |
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Algerian Butterfly Orchid (plantanthera algeriensis). |
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Bumblebee Orchid (Orquídea abejorro / Ophrys bombyliflora). |
Wild Flowers were seen in good numbers including several of the very rare and endemic Sierra Nevada species.
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Nevada House Leek (Sempervivum minutum). |
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Alpine Gentian (Gentiana alpina). |
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Aquilegia nevadensis. |
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Linaria glacialis. |
1 comment:
Words fail me Mick - every species/photo is superb. To me they all rank equally. A truly splendid array of what there is to see in your back yard. And a wonderful testament to your skills as both a guide and a photographer. I always seem to be waiting for the next installment !!
All the best for 2015.
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