Press Release (translated by Google)

The site, located in Jerez de la Frontera, will have a new environmental restoration project to boost environmental conditions and conserve the biodiversity of the wetland.

The Ministry of Sustainability and Environment of the Regional Government of Andalusia has formalized the inclusion of the wetland area known as Haza de la Torre in the Inventory of Wetlands of Andalusia (IAH), by resolution of the General Directorate of Protected Natural Areas published in the Official Gazette of the Regional Government of Andalusia (BOJA) on May 7, 2025, which can be consulted here. With this incorporation, Jerez de la Frontera now has six wetlands registered in this environmental catalogue, which currently includes 229 enclaves with relevant natural values spread throughout the Andalusian territory.

"The inclusion of Haza de la Torre in the Inventory of Wetlands of Andalusia represents a recognition of its current ecological value and a commitment to the future to guarantee its conservation, value its environmental functions and facilitate the harmonious coexistence between natural processes and the rural environment that surrounds it. With this step, the Regional Government of Andalusia reinforces its commitment to a more resilient, functional and connected network of natural spaces," said the general director of Protected Natural Spaces, José Enrique Borrallo.
The recognition of Haza de la Torre was approved at the last session of the Andalusian Wetlands Committee held in November 2024, and since then the necessary procedures have been initiated for its officialization as a unique space due to its ecological value. The wetland is located in the municipality of Jerez, in the vicinity of the rural neighbourhood of Mesas de Asta, on land that in the past housed ponds used by the sugar industry for the management of its waste. Since its abandonment, and thanks to its location and characteristics, the site began a process of natural recovery that has transformed these old artificial lagoons into an ecosystem with an outstanding wealth of fauna.

The renaturation process began in 2009, with the execution of various projects that improved the ecological conditions of the place. Part of the sediments accumulated over decades were removed and the interior walls that divided the ponds were removed, respecting the perimeter wall that currently contains the body of water. In addition, interior islands and hydraulic gates were created that allow a controlled connection with the Tabajete and Obispo pipes. Today, the water that feeds the wetland comes exclusively from rainfall, although there is the possibility of enabling additional contributions from these pipes if necessary.

Historically, this place was part of the old estuary of the Guadalquivir River, and the oldest maps identify it with names such as Laguna Grande, Laguna del Mortero or Laguna de Mesas de Asta. More than a decade after the agreements signed between the Junta de Andalucía and the company that owns the land for its restoration, Haza de la Torre has established itself as a first-rate refuge for the birdlife of southwestern Andalusia.

During the wintering seasons, more than 5,000 birds of about thirty different species have been counted. Among them, there are emblematic species such as the marbled teal, the osprey or the common crane. But what really distinguishes this enclave is its key role in the conservation of the black-billed tern, an endangered species for which Haza de la Torre has become one of the most important spaces in the entire Mediterranean basin. Notable populations of avocets and slender-billed gulls have also been detected in the wetland.

Currently, the enclave is home to the largest bird breeding community in the province of Cádiz, only behind the Bahía de Cádiz Natural Park. The uniqueness of this fact lies in the small size of the wetland, of just 39.4 hectares, compared to the more than 10,000 that the natural space of the Bay occupies. This data shows the exceptional value of the wetland and the success of the environmental recovery efforts carried out in recent years.

With the aim of continuing to make progress in the ecological improvement of the wetland, the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment has planned a new restoration project financed with European funds from the Next Generation EU programme, within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. This initiative will be developed in collaboration with the private property of the land, through a specific agreement.

Among the planned actions, the improvement of the water storage capacity of the wetland basin by removing new sediments, the creation of a perimeter rein to facilitate water retention and prevent the entry of predators, and the adaptation of the existing islands to favor the nesting of waterfowl are contemplated. Likewise, access to the site will be improved by adapting the path and installing a wooden pergola that will allow discreet observation of the lagoon without interfering with the ecosystem. Finally, vegetation will be planted in the immediate surroundings in order to stabilise the soil, stop erosion and prevent the arrival of sedimentary dragging into the interior of the wetland.

Laguna de los Tercios
Although only a short distance from Laguna Chica, Laguna de los Tercios (aka Las Marismas de Pozo or Laguna del Hato Carne) does not seem to be part of the Lagunas del Puerto de Santa Maria complex (Complejo Endorreico del Puerto de Santa María).  Perhaps as a result it's far less well-known (E-bird lists only 18 checklists for this site vs well over 200 for the Puerto de Santa María lagunas).  The great advantage of this site is that the views across the laguna are not obscured by tamarisks and other scrub.  I briefly visited the place in April and had more birds than my subsequent visit to  Lagunas del Puerto de Santa Maria. I had 8 Whiskered Terns (the only one of my trip to Spain this spring),5 Red-crested Pochards, 5 Shelducks, 45+ Collared Pratincoles, 12 Black-winged Stilts, 9 Avocets and 15 Yellow Wagtails

I omitted to take any photos at this site but it again came up trumps for Red-knobbed Coot - a lonely single bird.  Black-headed Weavers showed well too and I kept up my good 'hit rate' here for Little Bittern. Sadly, the heron/egret colony here is now deserted. 

Embalse de Barbate
This is a distant view of the Embalse de Barbate from Alcala de los Gazules.  Last autumn you could barely see any water in the reservoir at all but despite this a couple of pairs of Osprey still breed here.  

I made a quick stop here en route to Carmona to look for Laughing Dove which happily obliged within a few minutes.  Like other wetlands it was satisfyingly wet but it was a disappointment that the egret colony is no longer active.  I also missed Little Bittern (usually obliging here) but had plenty of sightings of Purple Herons which nest in the reeds.

When I first visited Laguna de los Tollos in 2011 my expectations were low as I'd read that the claypits here had wrecked the local hydrology and ruined what had once been a premier site in Andalucia. However, I was very pleasantly surprised to find a large if shallow lake with Flamingos, Red-crested Pochards, Purple Swamphens and migrant waders.  Admittedly, the views were distant and, without a 'scope, it wasn't easy to check the birdlife but I was delighted to find the laguna still existed and that local people were fighting to repair the damage wrought by the extraction of clay.  

It was only after several subsequent visits that I fully appreciated just how lucky I'd been in 2011.  By then there was a designated mirador over the 'laguna' (Mirador La Mina), a hide with a board walk on the southern perimeter and several noticeboards. However, no sooner had this welcome infrastructure been constructed than a long drought set in.  Photos online show it was still occasionally wet (spring 2016 & 2018) but never as full as it was when I first saw it.  The photos below, taken in spring 2024, shows just how dry the 'laguna' had become.  By then, the signage had become cracked and bleached by the sun, and what remained of the 'laguna' had become the haunt of dog walkers and, to judge from tyre tracks, off-road bikers.  Stone-curlews were still present and Collared Pratincoles hawked over what few wet areas remained but it was a sorry sight and a poor reward for those locals who had fought to preserve the laguna.  

Arriving back in the area in March 2025 and fully aware of the deluge of rain that had beset Andalucia through the autumn of 2024 and well into 2025, visiting this laguna was a high priority. I wasn't disappointed! 

The view from the roundabout at the edge of El Cuervo instantly confirmed that the laguna had reasserted itself.  Better still it looked even fuller than it had in 2011.  The necklace of tamarisk that surrounded the lake now looked more like a crown.  ​

I visited the site twice during my stay (on 20/04 see here  & on 29/04 with Nick Brown - see here) and each time was a delight even though I missed the pair of Red-knobbed Coots reported earlier this spring. The star bird was undoubtedly Ferruginous Duck which I located from the hide amongst the many Red-crested Pochard (18) and Pochard (2).  On my second visit I was pleased to relocate the Ferruginous Duck in the same area but was still more pleased to see a second more distant bird. Also bobbing about on (and under) the water were Great-crested, Little and Black-necked Grebes (6+). Gull-billed Tern, Collared Pratincole and hoards of hirundines hawked above the laguna whilst the muddy margins held 9+ Little Ringed Plover, a few Black-winged Stilts, fewer Avocets and a handful of Common Sandpipers. Fewer than a dozen Flamingos stalked though water between the drowning tamarisks reminding me how shallow this superficially extensive laguna actually was.    The scrubby margins of the laguna had Sardinian, Melodious and Reed Warblers plus half-a-dozen Bee-eaters burbling away in the sky above them.  I was pleased to later discover that the nearby clay pits hosted a small colony of this gorgeous species. 

,Although it was wonderful to see Ferruginous Duck (a scarce and endangered species in Spain), the real star of my visits was the laguna itself.  The water was so high that a section of the (new?) boardwalk just below the Mirador la Mina as flooded and impassable.  The from the mirador itself had been transformed from somewhat dull one commanding a view over a pasture dotted with puddles of differing sizes, to one showcasing a vista across a laguna roughly a kilometre in diameter. Gratifyingly, the tired noticeboards have been replaced by smart new ones.  The hide was now at the end of a pier rather than a causeway over dry land and offered a stupendous view across the water.  On the far side of the lake there was a spruce new boardwalk which permitted a better view of the northern shoreline.  A section of flooded boardwalk stymied my plans to walk around the whole lake (c6km) so that will have to wait for a future visit.  The only cloud hanging over this wonderful experience was how long I may have to wait to see it repeated. the recent drought lasted for four years and even before then the laguna never seems to have regained its full size.  This, I'm told, has been compounded  by a local landowner who has dammed a small but vital feeder create a small agricultural reservoir.  Only time will tell, but if you're visiting this area and other lagunas seem to have a lot of water, I recommend you come here and see for yourself. Like me you might be pleasantly surprised.  

When I saw the orginal Spanish version of this guide, Aves de España, soon after it was published in 2000, I was so impressed by the artwork that I bought a copy despite my rudimentary Spanish. I soon learnt to appreciate the usefulness of the large distribution maps (covering the whole of Iberia and the Spanish Atlantic Islands) and discovered that with the help of a dictionary, I could grasp interesting details regarding population size and distribution. It was a book that I regularly recommended to others even the linguistically challenged like me! I was delighted therefore when the English translation appeared in 2016 and I was able not only to dispense with the dictionary but use the text for checking ID. Almost a decade on, a second English edition of this book has been published. I start with the assumption that, whether you live there or are merely planning to visit Spain, a copy of this book will be very useful so focus on two questions; What’s changed? and “Is it worth getting if I have the older version? ​

As it was the book’s illustrations that first attracted me, let’s turn to them first. The preface tells me that the new edition has 129 “completely new or substantially revised drawings”. Some replace the occasional misfire in the original edition (e.g. Tawny Owl), others illustrate omitted plumages (e.g. juvenile Roller) or better illustrate exotic species which are now promoted to the main body of the work. The latter point is particularly useful for Black-headed and Yellow-crowned Weavers as the illustrations now show females (omitted from the Collins Bird Guide) something which, until now, you had to resort to African guides to discover. Several newly ‘split’ species have fresh illustrations (e.g. Moltoni’s Warbler and Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch plus one of a female). More rare/scarce species also get a fuller treatment being elevated from the appendices to the main part of the work (e.g. Caspian Gull) However, some disappointments remain. The existence of the Mediterranean race of Spotted Flycatcher, split by some, is briefly noted in the text but neither illustrated nor described. Regrettably, Common Rosefinch and Trumpeter Finch are only illustrated by depictions of males in their summer glory despite the drabber winter/female/juvenile plumages being the ones more likely to be encountered. That House Bunting failed to make the cut is unsurprising given that it only recently started breeding in Spain (Algeciras). The larger-than-usual images in this guide (and some seem subtly larger still in this edition) is something that, in general, I like. However, this comes at a cost as many species (particularly passerines) enjoy only a single large illustration reducing both the depiction of variation and the variety of postures shown. The absence of any illustration of juvenile Willow Warbler, for example, may invite confusion with Melodious Warbler for the unwary (although this pitfall is noted in the text).​

We met at around 09.00 near the road to the Presa de Celemin and after a short fruitless attempt to catch up with the rare buntings there (another target) we decided to look for the buzzard. Just as we passed Cortijo de la Mediana (which overlooks La Janda), whose car was in front of mine, halted to take photos of a buzzard perched on a telegraph pole.  One glimpse of the bird's pale head and sandy-brown upperparts was enough to ring alarm bells!  The bird then flew but showed well several times in flight; it was just as pale below with a slightly rufescent tail and rufous mottling on the lower flanks. It not only looked like a cirtensis buzzard but also very much like the photos I'd seen of the bird in question.  It was clearly either the bird in question or a very similar 'gibraltar' buzzard (a hybrid "Long-legged" X Common Buzzard hybrid).  However, what totally threw me was that this bird was carrying a highly visible bright yellow ring on the left leg and duller ring on right. I found this was puzzling as all the photos I'd seen of the bird in question showed that it wasn't ringed!  Fortunately, it turned out that the bird had indeed been caught and ringed before Christmas. 

It was certainly a striking bird but distinctive though the plumage was, to my eye structurally it looked very similar the Common Buzzard.  Admittedly, my experience of nominate Long-legged Buzzard is limited but every time I've seen them (most recently in summer 2023 in Bulgaria) they've struck me as distinctly bulkier and longer winged than Common Buzzard. Given the huge variability in Common Buzzard's plumages and the likely impact of the desert habitat in North Africa on colour variation, I feel it more likely that the taxon's colour could change to resemble Long-legged than its morphology alter to mimic Common Buzzard.  This form, unlike the nominate one, also regularly hybridises with Common Buzzard. Genetic studies have shown that the Atlas Buzzard (as I prefer to call it) is more closely related to Common than Long-legged, backing my feeling that  it's a race of Buteo buteo not Buteo rufinus.  This was well explained as long ago as 2019 (see here). Bluntly, I'm surprised that so many still insist on calling it a Long-legged at all!  

How many are wintering on La Janda?
Little Bunting is the most frequent of these visitors and then Rustic with Black-faced coming in a very long way behind. I've not checked in detail but, although there are a few records of two or more birds at the same site (and sometimes one of each!) for the most part records (from the UK at least) involve single birds which don't return the following year. Accordingly, the appearance of a mixed flock of Little and Rustic Buntings on small part of La Janda in the winter of 2023/2024 was extraordinary and their reappearance in similar numbers in winter 2024/2025 unprecedented.  It's hard to be sure exactly how many Little Buntings were present that first winter as they were very active. The highest count on E-Bird seems to be 10 on 29/03/24 but I was told verbally by birders there that they thought that there were 12, 14 or even 20 present. Whilst the latter figure may be on the high side, the frequency with which 4-5 were reported that winter is still  remarkable. Rustics were less frequent (and more elusive) with most reports involving only 1-2 birds but 4 were reported on 31/12/23. 

This winter the number of Rustics seems to have been maintained with most reports of 1-2 birds. One of the two birds I had on 22/02/2025 was a well marked handsome individual (see the photo above) and the other a good but not so striking bird. However, I couldn't dismiss the suggestion that there were 3 or more birds present. (An astonishing seven reported on 01/08/24 must surely be an error in transcription as not only is the number very high but the date is extraordinarily early. In the UK there are a handful of reports in late August but they mostly turn up in September and peak in October)   Little Buntings however have been distinctly less in evidence this year. Most reports involve only 1-2 birds with counts of 4 on a couple of dates and recently one of 6. This reflects my own experience and talking to local ringers, they confirmed that numbers were much lower this winter.  

Are we seeing the whole iceberg or just the tip? 
If the buntings return next winter, which seems highly likely, will it mark the establishment of a small but regular wintering flock on La Janda?  If so, it rather begs the question "How many Little and Rustic Buntings are wintering in Andalucia?"   It seems unlikely that these are the only Little and Rustic Buntings in the province and there's an awful lot of very similar habitat dotted around SW Spain but who's looking?

Much, rightly, has been written about the dire state of the Coto Doñana in recent years but there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the work of Salarte (and others) in forming the Alianza Marismas del Guadalquivir-Doñana (Guadalquivir-Doñana Marshes Alliance) to restore wetlands in the area.  One of the things that marks Salarte out from other conservation organisations is their commitment to working with communities and traditional occupations.  Having already done much good work in the Bahai de Cadiz, they have set their sites on restoring marshes along the Guadalquivir.  The organisation deserves enormous credit for the scope, ambition and innovative nature of this project. 

This attractive infographic below shows the extent of their project. 

Although very attractive, the infographic above may be hard for those not familiar with the area to follow so I've set out the sites on the east bank of the Guadalquivir in a simple (if boring!) map. 

Wetland Restoration – Presentation - Andalucia Bird Society  

​La vida regresa a las Marismas del Guadalquivir – Salarte

The Spanish and scientific names for House Bunting, Escribanos saharianos and Emberiza sahari, reminds us of its largely Saharan distribution. The English name, in contrast, reflects the species’ affinity for living around human habitations, something which has doubtless aided its recent expansion in range. Typically, after the discovery of a new colony, often in town centres, the population quickly expands.  This, and the impact of global warming bodes well for their predicted colonisation of Spain. ​

The House Bunting first appeared in Europe as recently as 2009 when one was discovered in Tarifa but the arrival of this African species in Spain wasn’t entirely unexpected.  African birds (and insects) have been pushing north into Morocco and on to Iberia for many years. More recent examples of this trend include White-rumped and Little Swifts and Trumpeter Finch but, historically includes several other species that are now considered a part of Europe’s avifauna without a second thought (e.g. Red-rumped Swallow)​

Despite a range across North Africa, in Morocco, House Bunting had been largely limited to the south in the 1950s with breeding further north restricted to a few localities in the Atlas Mountains. However, since the 1960s, it had been known to be expanding northwards. When birds were found breeding in Tangier in 2006, the first known breeding of the species north of the Atlas Mountains, it was predicted it would soon colonise Iberia.  Proof of breeding in Tétouan soon followed in 2010 and then Cueta in 2016.  In 2017 it was found to be as common as House Sparrow further east in Algiers.  With over 1,000km of coastline between Algiers and Tétouan, much of which is probably rarely explored by birders, it seems likely that the species is (or soon will be) breeding elsewhere along the North African littoral.  ​