A lesser kestrel is a big deal

I’M just back from a short break on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. I was staying in a friend’s seaside apartment on the Costa Blanca. That bit of coast is a concrete jungle.

Lovely weather and lovely food, but a landscape dominated by medium-rise apartment blocks and hotels. Not a promising place for wildlife, but I had interesting encounters with birds, and added a new species to my ‘life list’. My first encounter was with a species I have seen before, but not often. This area was once a huge producer of salt. The industry continues, though salt declined in value as a commodity with the development of refrigeration. The salt was produced in ‘salinas’ — large, shallow ponds, which were constructed, or enlarged, artificially and into which sea water was pumped, normally by windmills. The strong sun then evaporated the sea water and the salt could be harvested.

The ponds of the salinas are still there and, as I was being driven from the airport to the apartment, they were full of greater flamingos. There is an expectation that these extraordinary birds should be pink. Some of them did show a faint, pink flush, but the majority of them were either white and brown, or pure white. It takes a greater flamingo some years of feeding on brine shrimps to achieve its full, adult plumage of red-wing coverts and pale-pink body feathers.