Laguna de Fuente de Piedra

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Laguna de Fuente de Piedra.
Greater flamingos soaring at the Laguna de Fuente de Piedra

The Laguna de Fuente de Piedra is a wetland in the province of Málaga in Spain. The water surface is up to 6.5 kilometers long and 2.5 kilometers wide and then covers 1,300 hectares. Parts of the area are under nature protection. It has been under the Ramsar Convention since 1983 .

Even though it is an inland lake, the water is salty. The water level is relatively low and is rarely more than a meter. In spring the lake dries up and the salt crystallizes on the bottom. Salt was commercially extracted here from Roman times until the 1950s.

The water area provides food for numerous bird species and is an important resting place during bird migration . It is also the site of the largest Spanish breeding colony of greater flamingos . In 1998 a crèche with 15,300 young birds was counted here. Greater flamingos do not breed here every year, but only when there was sufficient rainfall in the previous autumn and winter so that there is a minimum water level.

Adult pink flamingos that breed at the Laguna de Fuente de Piedra are forced to eat in the Guadalquivir estuary and the Bay of Cádiz in order to continue breeding and rearing young birds. These feeding grounds are between 140 and 200 kilometers from the breeding colony. The change to the feeding grounds or back to the breeding colony takes place during the night. For a distance that the parent birds have to cover, they need at least two hours. Most flamingos stay in the feeding grounds for at least one day and return the next night to either replace the other breeding parent bird or to feed the young bird. In the case of some adult Greater Flamingos, however, it has been observed that immediately after feeding the young they set off again to the distant feeding grounds and do not remain in the breeding colony. This means that a smaller number of the greater flamingos breeding in the Laguna de Fuente de Piedra can travel at least 300 kilometers in one night. These flight routes are considered to be the furthest foraging flights that have been recorded for the bird family to date.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alan Johnson and Frank Cézilly: The Greater Flamingo . T & AD Poyser, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-7136-6562-8 , p. 160
  2. ^ Alan Johnson and Frank Cézilly: The Greater Flamingo . T & AD Poyser, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-7136-6562-8 , p. 121
  3. ^ Alan Johnson and Frank Cézilly: The Greater Flamingo . T & AD Poyser, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-7136-6562-8 , p. 122

Coordinates: 37 ° 6 ′ 42 "  N , 4 ° 46 ′ 15"  W.