9 September 2024: Day 3, birding in Chipiona and driving to Tarifa, WINGS Spain in Autumn
Click here to see (generally) where I am today.

Yesterday we went birding at local hotspots near Chipiona. One of the best was Playa de Montijo at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. We arrived just after high tide so the cobbles beyond the sand (not shown above) were exposed yet the birds were still close.

(embedded Google map of Playa de Montijo, Chipiona, Spain)

Since I wrote this article before this trip, the birds shown below are a selection of what was seen a year ago in September 2023. We saw them!

Of the 11 species of living oystercatchers, only the Eurasian oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus) has a distribution in Europe and Asia north of the equator. It is a Near Threatened species. We saw several noisy groups bowing and shouting, 25 in all.

A few whimbrelds fed near the oystercatchers. Interestingly the whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus) has recently been split into Eurasian whimbrel and Hudsonian whimbrel. Some taxonomic authorities do not accept the split and have kept them as one species. Alas, eBird is one of them so I won’t gain this Life Bird until eBird says changes its mind.

The bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica) is the most cosmopolitan of godwits, breeding in northernmost Eurasia and Alaska and spending the winter on the coasts of Africa, southern Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Its close relatives — black-tailed, Hudsonian and marbled godwits — are all New World birds.

The common greenshank (Tringa nebularia) resembles a greater or lesser yellowlegs except that its legs are green. All of them are in the Tringa genus.

Last September there was quite a collection of birds on this rocky bar including Eurasian oystercatchers, a black-bellied plover, common terns and the rare-to-the-area elegant tern. We saw them all plus a rare roseate tern.

A bonus for me was the slender-billed gull (Chroicocephalus genei).

Great birding from the beach.