Spain trip May 2025 - Part 4 Doñana National Park

Whilst the Doñana National Park covers a huge area, you can only access a few sites on the periphery. The only way into the park itself is to book onto a 4-wheel drive tour which is not ideal for birders, as it is a tour giving a general overview of the wetland. They do search for Lynx and the Spanish Imperial Eagles during the tours, but the likelihood of seeing either is quite remote. So given the price of these tours and the general lack of water (even if there was lots more water deeper into the park) we decided to give the tour a miss.

So, we revisited some of the sites that we went to in October 23 which were all dry at that time. The first site had water in the lagoon though!

White Storks (Ciconia ciconia) nesting on an electricity pylon!

The view from one of the hides.

Zooming in on the island you can see a White Stork on the left, some Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) in the centre and the ducks on the right are Common Pochards (Aythya ferina). Click on the photo to see larger and more clearly.

But that was it as far as birds were concerned, so a bit disappointing. We then followed the board walk to the scrubland area.

Whilst the vegetation looks quite dry here there were still some wildflowers here and there. Below the purple/pink flower is Lusitanian bellflower (Campanula lusitanica) though I'm not sure what the white daisy like flower is.

This is European Umbrella Milkwort (Tolpis barbata).

There's a translation in English if you open up the photo. It describes the scrubland area and the plants which grow there.

There were still some shrubs and flowers in bloom - this is a yellow Rockrose (Cistus halimifolius).

This shows what the soil looks like - more sand than anything else. Still, there were little bursts of colour here and there - the blue plant I think is Jasione montana (which doesn't only grow in mountains!) and what looks like tiny Pinks of some sort. In the foreground is a French Lavender (Lavandula stoechas) which had just about finished flowering.

We then went on to another site but this one was completely dry, so we didn't spend a lot of time there as looking out of a hide at an area that had once been a lagoon is a bit boring!

On top of this building at the entrance to the site was a White Stork nest.

There were four youngsters in the nest - must have been getting a bit crowded as they were getting quite big and stretching their wings! These two are Keith's photos taken with his long lens.

Mum was having a bad hair day!

More wildflowers - top left: Spanish Iris (Iris xiphium), top right: Flax-leaved Blue Pimpernel (Lysimachia monelli) Bottom: Rough-Flowered Catchfly (Silene scabriflora).

Despite there being a bit of water in some of the lagoons it was really disappointing again - given how hyped up the Doñana wetland has been over the years to find it so dried up now is such a terrible shame. I don't think we will be back.