Although busy, June provided some time to catch up with local summer specialties including Eleonora’s falcon, common rock thrush or western olivaceous warbler, plus a welcome variety of waders in El Hondo.

A recent visit to the coastal lagoon of Merja Zerga, a stopover of the East Atlantic Flyway and home to slender-billed curlews before their extinction, yielded some of the critically endangered and WP’s last marsh owls.