Under the orange tree

I was standing under an orange tree in Plaza Cantarero, as one is prone to do, when I spotted some tiny little birds flitting round from branch to branch and from leaf to leaf – they were that small.

They moved around very quickly and every so often would pop out and hover in front of the tree/me. On one occasion, one of them chased a fly around, and eventually caught it.

I had my point and shoot and managed to get a couple of reasonable shots before heading back to base to try and identify the little mite.

I fairly quickly eliminated the Tawny Owl as a possible, wrong shaped beak, and the Emu, a bit too small for one of them, which led me to the inescapable conclusion that it was, in fact, Bonelli’s Warbler, a leaf warbler of the genus Phylloscopus. They really are tiny birds, quite skittish but fascinating to watch.

They are basically confined to Southern Europe and are named after the Italian ornithologist Franco Andrea Bonelli.