Rainy Day Post

For today’s rainy day post I’m using up the photographs from May’s Menorca holiday which produced 19 days of sunshine. I’m then binning the remainder of the pictures before everyone complains about Menorca overkill.

Es Grau just 4 miles from the capital of Mahon, is a typical Menorcan fishing village, where 85% of the population are true Menorcans. Close to and part of the village is the Nature Reserve of S’Albufera, an area ideal for walkers and where a typical selection of May birds can be found if you try hard enough. Here’s a selection of pictures from Es Grau with minimal comment from me.

Carrer D'Es Pescadors, Fisherman's Street - Es Grau

There were masses of Spotted Flycatchers in early May, one decided to fly off just as I clicked the shutter button, making for a weird shot.

Spotted Flycatcher

Spotted Flycatcher

Audouin’s Gulls are fairly commonplace in coastal locations like Es Grau while Yellow-legged Gulls are more numerous both on the coast and inland.

Yellow-legged Gull

Audouin's Gull

Audouin's Gull

 I think the creature below is known as a Beautiful Damselfly.

Beautiful Damselfly 

Es Grau, Menorca

Like many of the heron family Purple Herons can be very shy, usually taking off long before you spot them skulking in the reeds where their stripy appearance makes them blend in. Little Egrets can often be more confiding.

Purple Heron

 

Little Egret

There’s a viewpoint just outside the village where birds of prey circle on the thermals and Bee Eaters feed on high, so high that sometimes they can barely be seen but their liquid calls make you look up for their whereabouts. Click on the xeno-canto button to be transported to the Mediterranean.

Bee Eater

Red Kite

Booted Eagle

Coots and many other species were feeding young in early May.

Coot

Es Grau

Es Grau 

That's all for today folks, let's hope the weather improves soon to something like that of the Mediterranean. 

No Wheats, Menorca Instead.

No luck with the Lapwings or the Wheatears at Pilling today. The Lapwing chicks stayed in the muddy gullies where they can hide away as soon as the parents warn them. The Wheatears seemed wary of the trap and when I got a clear view of one of the males I saw it had a shiny ring - one of the birds I ringed two days ago. So it’s probably the same gang of Wheatears hanging about the sea wall and fattening up for the final push north. Other birds this morning: Buzzard, Reed Bunting, 2 Willow Warbler, Reed Warbler, Blackcap, Pied Wagtail. 

For today’s post and for the birders I’m posting bird pictures from the recent Menorca holiday. To satisfy the just Menorca fans out there I’ve included photographs of island life and the landscape. 

When we arrived on 28th April the marsh at Tirant was pretty much parched after some weeks of a dry spell. A wet spot in the centre of the marsh was just visible and where most species hung out, with Little Egrets, Purple and Grey Heron, Gadwall, Marsh Harrier, Squacco Heron, Black-winged Stilt, Little Grebe, Water Rail and Bee Eaters. Passerines included Woodchat Shrike, Corn Bunting, Tawny Pipit, Zitting Cisticola, Whinchat, Stonechat and the inescapable but unseen Nightingale and Cetti’s Warbler. 

A Whiskered Tern fed over the reeds for two days, moving between here and the pool of Es Prat. There’s a record but not very good shot of the tern below, as Whiskered Terns are both fast and very active feeders. Unfortunately I wasn’t quick enough to photograph a Bittern which walked across the road in front of the car before disappearing into the reeds, a rare sighting in Menorca. Two sightings of Osprey here this year, fishing the open water and then feeding at the top of power pylons. During the last few days of the holiday up to 15 Wood Sandpipers graced the pools, unfortunately too distant to photograph. 

Whiskered Tern

Black-winged Stlit

Es Prat, Menorca

 Bee Eater

 Woodchat Shrike

Rural Scene - Menorca

One day I glimpsed a turtle as it submerged into a muddy puddle: back home I looked my picture up on Google and I believe it to be Menorcan Turtle/European Pond Turtle Emys orbicularis. This turtle is quite distinct from the land based Hermann's Tortoise Testudo hermanni which we saw on one occasion just up the road from the marsh and along the dry, dusty track leading to the Tirant headland. 

 Menorcan Turtle

Hermann's Tortoise

From the headland it’s possible to walk to the shore, dunes and stream below where more Bee Eaters hang out, with Little Ringed Plover and Common Sandpiper on the water’s edge. Raptors near the headland proved to be a good number of Common Kestrels and Red Kites, with no Red-footed Falcon or Hobby this year, just a couple of fast-hovering Lesser Kestrels and the ever present Booted Eagles. 

Booted Eagle

Heading west the road from Tirant leads up to Cap De Cavallaria and yet another cup of coffee at a favourite chill-out spot. Why is it you never get a bad cup of coffee in Menorca?

Towards Cap De Cavalleria

 Cap De Cavalleria

More from Menorca or elsewhere soon on Another Bird Blog.

A Day Of Reckoning

It’s all very well clearing off on two weeks holiday in May, but that fortnight also appears to be the time of maximum growth in the garden at home, when the grass grows an inch an hour, the trees sprout in wild abandon and the hedges reach heights previously undreamt of. So when the BBC’s forecast of an “unseasonal gale” materialised this morning I realised a day of reckoning had arrived and instead of going birding, I should trim our now monstrous hedgerow in the relative shelter of the back garden.

However, so as not to deprive blog readers of a fix of photos I’m posting more pictures from Menorca while I settle down to watch the Barcelona GP and dream of Spain.

Spotted Flycatchers were much scarcer this year, the reason probably as simple as them moving north a little earlier than we arrived. The one below I snapped in the hotel garden. I’d very much like to see a few nearer to home this year but this is another species as scarce as hen’s teeth around here nowadays.

Spotted Flycatcher

The ever present Hoopoe had a nest just up the road and whilst feeding itself in the hotel grounds would occasionally fly off with the largest items of prey, presumably to present to the female sat tight on eggs. Otherwise Hoopoes aren’t particularly easy to get close to in Menorca and are generally very shy with just the calls giving away their presence, followed by sight of a colourful, floppy winged bird flying off into the distance.

Hoopoe

The other shy bird is the Woodchat Shrike, the picture below representing as close as they will allow a person to get.

Woodchat Shrike

Not so the smart looking Tawny Pipits, so pale and immaculate, much more approachable in the variety of farm and coastal habitats they exploit where their sandy shades merge into the often dry tones of the Menorcan landscape.

Tawny Pipit

Here’s a few raptors; Red Kite, not at all numerous in Menorca but fairly common, Booted Eagle which vies with Kestrel for the title of commonest raptor, and then Red-footed Falcon, a regular visitor to the island.

Red Kite
Booted Eagle
Kestrel
Red-footed Falcon
Red-footed Falcon

Yes, the hedge got a haircut but just in case anyone thinks I was just stretching the truth a little, or looking for sympathy, here’s the proof. Me, I’d rather be birding.

I’d Rather Be Birding

Balancing Act

Well as my old friend and hero Victor Meldrew might say, “I don’t believe it!”. People in the south of England swelter and turn a healthy shade of orange while us worthy folk in the North West get three solid days of rain on Sunday, Monday and now Tuesday, whereby my brown colour is more akin to the onset of rust, the car lies idle in the drive and my binoculars and camera fret away, neglected in their cases. It’s just not fair, we get months of nice weather and now we have to pay the price and withstand an equal amount of crappy weather fit for ducks only.

Meanwhile Mr Google may discontinue the blog on the grounds of inactivity if I don’t show willing and find something, anything, to write. “If in doubt look through the archives” as the BBC might say, and show some of the oldies, some repeats and hope that the viewers don’t notice the “R” in the programme schedule. The advantage of a blog is of course that it is totally free to view and to compose, apart from these stressful non-birding times which take their toll of the old grey matter. But to compensate me for this I am considering making an online charge of £1 as does News International now with the “Times”, but not I think with the “Sun”. I wonder why? And by the way, the “Sun” apparently sells 3 million copies a day - amazing.

So here are a few pictures of birds sitting or balancing on the top of plants, walls, wires, man-made objects or simply balancing in the air, all the things they do so effortlessly and which we marvel at.

Oh, they are not all repeats, maybe similar but certainly “Another Chance To See”.

Stonechat
Spotted Flycatcher
Kestrel
Woodpigeon
Booted Eagle
Spotted Flycatcher
Woodchat Shrike
Tawny Pipit
Redshank

And if all things are equal surely we will get dry weather tomorrow?

Menorca Again

It would be a shame to waste the photographs I took in Menorca and I haven’t got a lot to report today as I spent most of it in Kendal, so here are a few more pics from the Balearic island least popular with most Brits.

One of the best places for birding in Menorca is Tirant, an area of wetland and farmland just a left turn off the main road between Es Mercadal a largish inland town and Fornells the famous yachting and boating resort on the north coast where all the tourists head for in search of the legendary lobster soup. Less than a mile up the road is a farm where Bee Eaters hang out, together with Tawny Pipits, Turtle Doves and the inevitable Sardinian Warblers, Nightingales and Cetti’s Warblers. I think I explained how difficult it is to get pictures of the latter two birds that stay in cover most of the time singing incessantly, but I did get shots of the first three. I must say that the Bee Eaters are very shy and although they fly around freely, as soon as people get out of vehicles or approach the farm gateway, the birds move some distance away. It was only by hiding in the hire car, window partly down that I managed to get the shot below.

Bee Eater
Turtle Dove
Tawny Pipit
Sardinian Warbler
Further along this road parking in a gateway (shades of Over Wyre) gives fairly distant views over Es Prat, where this year we saw Greenshank, quite a good bird for the island, certainly in May. This year the pool was quiet with Little and Cattle Egrets in the wetter areas and a couple of Marsh Harriers that had a habit of keeping well away from any roads, so in two weeks on the island I didn’t get a decent picture of a Marsh Harrier.

Near the marsh where the road lined with Stonechats leads eventually up to Cala Tirant and more Audouin’s Gulls, we stopped to admire Little Ringed Plover on the only area of visible mud which also gave the opportunity to watch both a Woodchat Shrike and a single Red-backed Shrike, several Spotted Flycatchers, more Booted Eagles and yet more Egyptian Vultures, by now becoming almost the commonest raptor. Unfortunately a Roller on the proverbial overhead wires gave brief views only before undulating away into the marsh. The herons all occur here, Little, Grey, Squacco and Purple with the occasional Great Egret.

Woodchat Shrike
Red-backed Shrike
Booted Eagle
Egyptian Vulture
Audouin’s Gull
Spotted Flycatcher
Stonechat
Another coffee stop, at Fornells this time, but it is a pretty good place to watch out for Ospreys patrolling the shallow waters, and although they are not common, they do breed on the island.

Osprey
Fornells
Fornells