Atlas Buzzard on La Janda - that even I got a decent shot shows how obliging it was!
My trip to Spain this February started badly but only got better. I arrived at Seville Airport late on Monday 10th February so opted to stay overnight nearby (5 Soles Hostal www.cincosolesrg.es - recommended). This proved to be a wise move as even before I got there a warning light lit up on the dash and by the next morning it was clear that the car had a slow puncture. Taking the car back to the airport on Tuesday morning and the ensuing faffing about reduced birding time so I opted to head straight down to Alcala and pop into Humedal El Pantano (just off the motorway near Los Palacios y Villafranca) rather than driving over to Brazo del Este. This was a lucky move as I bumped into friend Mick Richardson there just after he'd found a Laughing Dove. However, his opening line to me wasn't about the dove but "Have you come to see the shrike?" to which I replied "What shrike?". Ten minutes later and a couple of km along the track, I was watching an adult Isabelline Shrike - a Spanish tick! I was also delighted to see several Great-spotted Cuckoos at the site (see Mick's blog here for photos of the birds and - content warning - one of me).
One of my targets in Spain was seeing the long-staying "Long-legged" Buzzard on La Janda. Although I'd seen several of them in Cadiz Province over the years, including finding one that was a textbook example of an adult with an unmarked cinnamon tail, sandy head, rufous belly patch, etc., I've never enjoyed prolonged or close views of the species. Accordingly, when fellow birders and Cadiz enthusiasts Richard & Michelle Page-Jones contacted me to suggest meeting up on La Janda on Wednesday morning I needed little encouragement!
Atlas Buzzard - Photos courtesy of Richard Page-Jones
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!
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