Why Skiathos?

Keen eyed readers will note how the header picture changed. I swopped the Glasson Dock Common Tern for a Skiathos Yellow Wagtail. 

Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla flava) is familiar to British birders but throughout Europe there are many overlapping races and intergrades of Yellow Wagtail, whereby literally dozens of races and sub-species have been described. This makes identification and assignation difficult, especially at migration time in Central Europe in the case of juveniles like the one shown.

I'm thinking that the header bird, the one below, may be Motacilla flava beema, also known as Sykes’ Wagtail, especially since other Yellow Wagtails I saw fitted the same criteria. Yellow wag experts out there may wish to comment? 

Yellow Wagtail

Otherwise, birding on Skiathos Island proved rather unexciting during very hot, clear weather and wall-to-wall sunshine – not the best conditions for dropping migrants onto an off-shore island. So I returned home with very few bird pictures. 

We saw lots of Spotted Flycatchers, Whinchats, Yellow Wagtails, Red-rumped Swallows and Barn Swallows, together with Buzzards, Willow Warblers, Kingfishers and the inevitable Eleonora’s Falcons. Unlike other years Red-backed Shrikes were few and far between where by locals told of a long hot summer where a successful breeding season may have finished early. 

Spotted Flycatcher 

Red-backed Shrike 

A developing storm on our last day saw thousands of Red-rumped Swallows overhead as they descended below cloud level to escape the incoming turbulence. We left Skitahos just in time because since we returned home Cyclone Zorba laid waste to a number of places on the Peloponnese mainland including parts of Athens. 

There was a knock-on effect to Skiathos where we heard that tourists out to enjoy the last week of the Skiathos season have had a pretty raw deal from cloud, rain and wind.

Today, Sunday, from Skiathos. "The main road is closed at Acropolis, at Kolios and at Troulos due to flooding and water escaping from the mountain into the sea. Power disruptions due to the weather. 102 mm of rain today to add to the 53 mm of Saturday." 

Nonetheless we asked the lovely Anna to reserve our room for next year as we have no reason to doubt the question of “Why Skiathos?”. 

Why Skiathos?

Skiathos Town

No Name Gyros

Big Aselinos Beach

Skiathos 

Skiathos donkey

Bourtzi Skiathos

Ouzo

Yes, we will be back.  And very soon.

So will Another Bird Blog with more news, views and photos.

Linking this post to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Boomerangs

September means Skiathos where Sue and I join the Boomerang Club, people who return year after year to this very special Greek Island.  Don't forget - click the pics.

Skiathos is the most popular of the Sporades, the group of islands east of Volos and north of Evia on mainland Greece. The island of Skiathos is actually an extension of wooded Mount Pelion 100 miles away on the mainland and the scenery reflects this. Skiathos is a green island with pine forests and abundant water with fig, olive, plum, and almond trees, as well as grapes. 

 Skiathos

Leaving Skopelos

Skiathos embraced tourism many years ago where on glistening beaches, wooded hillsides and in peaceful valleys are a number of the finest hotels in Greece. We stay in one such place that shall remain our secret.

Skiathos has much to offer people of all ages and nationalities from Northern climates seeking a blast of September sunshine. We find ourselves amongst fellow Brits, East Europeans, Finns, Danes, Norwegians and even the occasional German. Luckily we don’t do lying on the beach so the sunbed issue never arises, but the queue for the bus to lively Skiathos Town at 1800 hours can be problematical. 

"Every September Skiathos holds the Katsonia Festival held in memory of the submarine Lambros Katsonis sunk on 14th September 1943 close to Kastro, the former capital of Skiathos located on the northern tip of the island." 

Memorial to the sinking of Lambros Katsonis 

"Whilst trying to intercept a German troop transport during World War Two, the Lambros Katsonis was sunk by the German submarine chaser UJ-2101. This tragic event resulted in the drowning of 32 crewmen, including the ship’s captain, as well as 15 other crew captured by the Germans. 

Amazingly, three of the ship’s crew – Lt. Eleftherios Tsoukalas, the ship’s executive officer, and petty officers Antonios Antoniou and Anastasios Tsigros managed to swim to the shores of Skiathos, an epic feat which took them nine exhausting hours. They hid on the island until they eventually managed to return to Egypt and rejoin the Greek fleet.” 

For beach lovers there are over 60 sandy beaches in Skiathos, including Koukounaries rated 7th best beach in the world and best in Greece. Banana Beach just around the headland is the island's only naturist beach, perhaps because it is more remote and very sheltered. Most of the beaches are easy to reach by bus or moped as they are generally alongside the only main road on the Island and reached by following a track or dirt road. 

Ligaries or Kechria?

Jimnys

Skiathos

The remotest north-coast beaches like Ligaries, Mandraki and Ttsougria are accessible only by jeep, dirt-bike, foot or donkey. We hire a Jimny jeep for our stay even though there is an excellent bus service that plies frequently between Skiathos Town and Koukounariés resort, 7.5 miles west. The buses call at 26 numbered stops where our own is Bus Stop 16, the small resort of Agia Paraskevi at the entrance to Platanias valley.

The often crowded bus, standing room only, is an essential Skiathos experience where the aromas of a day on the beach, mozzie cream, wasp deterrent and a meal of garlic mushrooms & tzatziki make for a heady experience. 

Skiathos Bus

The Jimny is essential for exploring the more remote parts of the island where their remoteness involves often tortuous, bouncing progress over terrain badly rutted by winter storms that cascade off steep hillsides onto unmade tracks below. 

Skiathos jeep

To Evagelistria

View from Kanapitsa

The success of the first Mamma Mia filmed in 2007 around neighbouring Skopelos created a sort of mass-hysteria when people who loved the movie travel to Skiathos looking for the island depicted in the film. The cultists may not find those actual scenes, rarely meet up with Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan or Donna, but are never disappointed. 

Mamma Mia

In Skiathos Town cafes, gyro joints and tavernas line the sunny boulevard where pristine yachts shine in the everlasting sun. Goldie Hawn is rumoured to be a regular in Fresh Café, hot from her $30 million yacht moored off-shore. We can vouch for the coffee and the wedge of marbled cake that arrives with each order but we have yet to meet Goldie. 

Skiathos

Eating out each evening without worrying about the washing up is something of a bonus. And it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Souvlakia  

Taverna Maistrali 

No Name Gyros - Skiathos Town

Skiathos is a beautiful island where the only drawback is the difficulty of arriving or leaving due to the airport's notoriously short runway and summer thunderstorms that emanate from the hot mainland. Delays and cancellations are the stuff of legend. Touch wood. We have experienced the spectacular thunderstorms that light up the night sky but not the resulting delays. 

Skiathos Landing 

The birding here is casual, an adjunct to the holiday of relaxation and the vibes of Greece. Yes, there are birds to be found, especially since I seem to be the only birder on the island. Just as we like it. 

Woodchat Shrike 

Eleonora's Falcon 

 Yellow Wagtail

Red-rumped Swallow 

Red-backed Shrike 

Spotted Flycatcher

Hobby - http://www.luontoportti.com

Honey Buzzard - http://www.luontoportti.com

Boomerangs

Come late September the island winds down from the hectic five months of tourism when many businesses close and their owners return to Volos, Thessaloniki and Athens for the winter.

Ferry to mainland Greece

Skiathos subsides into normal as those left on the island breathe a sigh of relief until it’s time to start all over in May of the following year.

Back soon in Blighty. Now watch the video for a real feeling of Skiathos. 

 

This And That - Sunday October 1st

A run around the block on Saturday before the rains came didn’t produce too much in the way of birds. Sunday and it's still raining. 

I checked out the Linnet flock at Gulf Lane in the hope of a ringing session soon but a glance at the weather for the coming week doesn’t hold out much hope. While I was away in Greece Andy added another 25 Linnets and a handful of Goldfinch to the totals. Looking today most of the Goldfinch seemed to have moved on with the flock of 100+ birds almost exclusively Linnet. October is the peak migration time for Linnets so we expect the flock to increase again soon and also that those birds will include Linnets from further afield. 

Of course in Greece I’d missed the mid-September first arrivals of Pink-footed Geese to Lancashire but rather made up for it with many skeins flying off the marsh and over my head towards an inland destination. I’d counted more than 1700 in dozens of flocks before the movement died off and I too moved on. 

Pink-footed Geese

There was a Wheatear on the gateposts at Braides Farm with approximately 90 Lapwing and 100 Curlew scattered across the long grassy fields. 

Wheatear

A good find on a flooded field at Pilling/Rawcliffe Moss was a single Ruff feeding amongst a flock of 95 Lapwing but little else with a Saturday shoot with its accompanying noise and disturbance about to begin. 

Ruff

So in the absence of local news, and not much prospect for the coming week against the tail ends of two hurricanes, here’s more from Greece, 14-28 September 2017. 

A friendly horse - Platanias, Skiathos

 

Alonisos, Skiathos

The Yellow-legged Gulls of Skiathos are quite unlike our large UK gulls in exploiting the process of rubbish disposal and the British love of feeding birds. The Yellow-legged Gulls of Skiathos rarely come ashore but spend their time feeding offshore and sitting on the mostly flat sea, apart from on windy days. It was along the shore here at Alonisos that we had super views of an Eleonora's Falcon as one dashed left to right and quickly out of sight after being chased off by a Kestrel. 

Yellow-legged Gulls, Alonisos, Skiathos

I didn’t get any new birds this year but had a butterfly “tick” by way of a White Admiral Limenitis arthemis, a woodland species that we found along the margins of an olive grove near Alonisos. It took me a while to find this on Google because perhaps naturally enough, I searched for “black butterfly”. Doh! Seemingly, this species occurs in the UK and is increasing. 

White Admiral

We saw many, many Swallowtails this year, probably hundreds - a very beautiful butterfly that we also see during May in Menorca. “Papilio demoleus is an aggressive and very common butterfly. It is perhaps the most widely distributed swallowtail in the world.” – Wiki. 

Swallowtail

Below is yet another Red-backed Shrike and then a Whinchat. We saw very few Whinchats this year due to the lack of migrant birds as a whole. Also, not a single Wheatear and very few Yellow Wagtails. 

Red-backed Shrike

Red-backed Shrike

Whinchat

I knew that Spotted Flycatchers occasionally eat fruit but never witnessed it until this year in Skiathos. In the dry summer of Greece blackberries aren’t nearly as plump as those from a UK hedgerow but clearly good enough for a Spotted Flycatcher. 

Spotted Flycatcher

Spotted Flycatcher

Spotted Flycatcher

Skiathos

The Boat Yard, Skiathos

Stay tuned for more news, views and photos soon.

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesdasy.