Pink Flamingoes? In Spain?

The reason why we are in Antequera is because before coming to Spain we started following an informative Facebook blog, Mapping Spain, written by an ex-Canadian, Frank Thomae. Frank and his wife, Lisette, wrote a great blog extolling the virtues of Antequera and we were intrigued so we made plans to visit this city and possibly meet this interesting couple.

We contacted Frank who made plans for us to get together at a tapas bar on Friday. We are looking forward to that. We mentioned that we wanted to see the nearby lagoon with flamingoes and invited Frank to come with us.

We met and had lots of good travel stories to share as they have been to a lot of the same places we have been to in Mexico. All of us have itchy feet!

Anyways, the Laguna de Fuente de Piedra is located near Antequera and next to the town from which it takes its name. It is the largest lagoon in Andalusia and is home to the largest colony of pink flamingos in the entire Iberian Peninsula.

Their presence in this lagoon though depends on the amount of water that the lagoon has. Usually in autumn and winter there will be small groups and from February, if the water level is good, larger groups of up to 8,000 couples will nest there and will lay a single egg. Once these little ones learn to fly (at three months), between August and September, they will leave for Africa.

The lagoon is fed by underground water. When the water table drops through drought and pumping for irrigating the surrounding crops, the lake level drops too. There are been a drought in Andalucia and there was hardly any water in the lagoon, but we did see flamingos in the distance.

There are several other species of birds here also. Probably here because of the water. When we got there, birders with their binoculars were checking them out.

We read that the visitors centre is excellent and very informative but sadly it wasn’t open when we were there.

We said, “Hasta luego”, to Frank and will meet up with him and Lisette tomorrow night for tapas at a local bar, Rincon de Lola.Read more