Birding Come Rain Or Shine

Well what do you know? the morning was grey, gloomy and drizzly! Just as well I completed a short trip out on Thursday morning although there’s very little to report from yet another cool, blowy and truncated session. I fear Spring migration has ended before it began and that soon it will be time to hang up the bins and let the birds get on with whatever they do in the summer. 

Conder Green proved very uninspiring, the high water levels giving little in the way of birds except for several Reed Buntings, two each of Sedge Warbler and Reed Warbler and an unseasonal Goosnader. Glasson Dock was marginally better with a good selection of singing warblers as in 4 Blackcap, 2 Chiffchaff and singles of both Common and Lesser Whitethroat. 

Whitethroat

Fortunately, and for regular blog readers who expect more than a couple of lines of prose and one picture from Another Bird Blog, there are more birds from Menorca 1st to 15th May. 

When exploring the area around Cap de Cavallaria in the north of Menorca I came across a very pale looking hedgehog. I managed to take one picture before the animal scuttled off into the undergrowth. By searching the Internet later I discovered the animal to be the North African or Algerian Hedgehog Atelerix algirus. 

North African or Algerian Hedgehog Atelerix algirus

The hedgehog is found in Algeria, France, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Tunisia and Spain. Because this hedgehog is native to Africa, it has been suggested that it was introduced by humans to the other countries where it is now found, including France, Spain and the island of Menorca. Specimens found inside a Bronze Age grave at the site of Biniai Nou in Menorca dated from the 13th century and indicated a rather recent arrival of the species on the island, probably via the Almohad invaders of that period. 

The North African Hedgehog closely resembles the European Hedgehog; however, there are several distinct differences between the two species. The North African Hedgehog tends to be smaller than its European counterpart. Its face is light in colour, usually appearing to be white, and the legs and head are brown. The underbelly varies in colour, and is often either brown or white. Its ears are highly visible on the head of the animal and are large in size. The body is covered in soft spines that are primarily white with darker banding. It was an interesting mammal find and a new one to add to my Menorca mammal list alongside the common and easily seen Hermann’s Tortoise and the less easily seen Stoat. 

Hermann's Tortoise

During the second week of our holiday there seemed to be a small influx of Red-footed Falcons, raptors which are late migrants and birds of open countryside, seen by us on overhead wires or circling recently cut fields in the areas of Cavallaria, Addaia and Es Grau. The largest group we saw was of 4 birds circling over Es Grau but a fellow hotel guest saw 10 red-foots together near Addaia just a day or two later. 

Red-footed Falcon

Red-footed Falcon

Red Kites seemed pretty plentiful this year while the normally common Booted Eagles proved scarce. Perhaps the endless sunny day kept the eagles soaring on high from where their binocular vision could easily locate prey without the birds lowering themselves to our level? 

Red Kite

Stonechats and Tawny Pipits were as common as ever alongside most highways, byways and the “camis”, the ancient bridleways and footpaths of Menorca. It’s along these routes that the three most common birds of Menorca are frequently heard but not necessarily seen - Nightingale, Cetti’s Warbler and Sardinian Warbler. The adjoining fields hold good numbers of unseen but vocal Quail.

Cami de Addaia

Stonechat

Tawny Pipit

Nightingale-Photo credit: chapmankj75 / Foter / CC BY

 

Menorca farm

Menorca gate made from Wild Olive Tree (acebush) wood

This Menorcan boy and girl I met in Alaior were sheltering from the fierce sun. Either that or there’s rain on the way. 

 Alaior - Menorca

Rain or Shine there will be more birds soon with Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Anni's blog and Eileen's Saturday 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

A Bit Of News and A Bit Of Cr..

Slowly catching up after the few weeks away I checked out a few nest sites today without too much luck. Two hoped for Little Owl nests produced blanks when a nest box contained old nest material but no Little Owls, and a second natural site in a tree cavity saw an adult fly off ahead of my approach with no eggs or hatched young in sight. I suspect the owls are nesting deep down in the cavity, out of arm or indeed harms reach.

Little Owl

Weeks ago Will had seen Stock Doves at the entrance of an apparently ideal tree hole, a location where several doves were in evidence from early in the new year, but when I checked the tree out today there was no evidence of any nest, Stock Doves or otherwise.

Afterwards I visited my regular Swallow site at Hambleton where I found quite a bit of Swallow activity with 4 on-going nests, two with eggs, a full clutch of 5 and a second one containing one newly laid egg, then 2 further nests at the lining stage.

Swallow
Swallow

Tomorrow I have some Tree Sparrow boxes to check and I hope I am not too late after their seemingly good start to the year.

Missing a few early nests is the price paid for heading off to Menorca in Spring. Of course the best thing about Menorca is that there are seemingly no other birders there, so the task each day becomes to go out and find birds to enjoy at leisure without the crutch of local bird pagers or grapevines.

So to fill today’s blog gaps here are a few common birds found and enjoyed two weeks ago in Menorca; a Red-footed Falcon that I discovered hunting insects amongst a pack of 15/20 Kestrels, followed by a rather distant shot of a shy but stunning Roller I came across at Tirant.

Red-footed Falcon
Kestrel
European Roller

Then there is an Egyptian Vulture near Son Bou, a species which is common and seen daily in Menorca but declining in large parts of its range, often severely. In Europe and most of the Middle East, it is half as plentiful as it was about twenty years ago, and the populations in India and south-western Africa have greatly declined. Now here’s something not commonly known about Egyptian Vultures; they feed on a range of food including mammal faeces especially human where it is commonly left on the ground e.g Africa and India, also insects in dung, carrion as well as vegetable matter and sometimes small live prey. Studies suggest that feeding on mammalian faeces helps in obtaining carotenoid pigments responsible for the bright yellow and orange facial skin.

Egyptian Vulture