Birding Menorca Style

Two weeks in Menorca have flown by with just a rehash of old pictures and pre-scheduled postings for regular blog readers, a lapse for which I apologise. But blogging cannot be a priority when faced with Mediterranean sunshine, places to see and birds to find. So after returning home on Friday I found time to reinvigorate the blog with hopefully a return to near normality. Soon I’ll hit the local patch here in Lancashire again but in the meantime here are some fresh photos from Menorca 2015. 

We based ourselves on the south coast of the island at our preferred resort and favoured hotel where familiar and friendly faces gave the customary Menorcan welcome of hugs and kisses. No wonder we return year after year to this beautiful island. The early season beach was deserted, the sky as blue as can be with familiar birds around the beach and the hotel grounds. 

Menorca in May

Kestrels in Menorca seem much darker than our own, as do the Woodpigeons, Goldfinches, Linnets, Chaffinches and Greenfinches, and one or two other species. It must be something to do with all that sunshine. Taking pictures of the finches is well-nigh impossible after Mediterranean Man’s preference to see and hear the birds in cages. 

Kestrel

Woodpigeon

Newly arrived House Martins were busy collecting strands of sticky, wet seaweed from the beach to use in repairing last year’s nests near the hotel entrance. 

House Martin

The common lizard seen all over the island is the Italian wall lizard Podarcis siculus although they do not easily pose and run for cover if approached, even in the hotel garden. 

Italian wall lizard Podarcis siculus

From the beach bar it’s possible to make friends with one or two Audouin’s Gulls which reappear about 1st May to take advantage of the goodies on offer from the early tourists. Gulls are the same the world over in learning to adapt to man’s waste and untidiness except that this particular rare and endangered gull is especially beautiful. The gull presents something of a challenge to anyone with a camera in capturing the bill of many shades of red in the strong light of a Menorca day. 

Audouin's Gull

Audouin's Gull

Normally there are lots Spotted Flycatchers nearby, our early May visits coinciding with the species main migration time. Not this year, whereby the species seemed rather absent, perhaps early, late or just in smaller numbers from their wintering grounds in southern Africa. 

Spotted Flycatcher

Too soon our first day was all but over with just the Scop’s Owls to entertain us as they always do, regular as clockwork. It’s just a shame that Canon’s red-eye reduction system not doesn’t quite live up to the claim on the box. Not with owls anyway, but we’ll try again tomorrow night. 

 

Scop's Owl

There will be more from Another Bird Blog in Menorca soon when we hit the road in our little Panda.

Menorcan Panda

Also, there’s news from the local patch just as soon as I recover from Mediterranean sunstroke.

Linking today to I'd Rather-b-Birdin and Eileen's Blog.

Picture Menorca

Another Bird Blog is still in Menorca. Here are more Menorca birds and Menorca scenes until I’m home.

Fornells - Menorca

Osprey

Audouin's Gull

Blue Rock Thrush

Spotted Flycatcher

Menorca sweets

Cap de Cavalerria

Hoopoe

Red-backed Shrike

Tawny Pipit

Menorca Donkeys

Booted Eagle

Woodchat Shrike

Stonechat

Menorca Farm

Sardinian Warbler

Menorca Sunset

Many Thanks for your visit and comments. I’ll catch up with you quite soon. 

Menorca Postcard

Another Bird Blog is in Menorca. So please excuse the brevity but here’s a picture postcard to be looking at until I’m home. 

Menorca view

Cattle Egret

Thekla Lark

 

Bee Eater

Rural Menorca

Turtle Dove

Hoopoe

Coffee time Menorca style

Ciutadella

Coot

Black-winged Stilt

Red Kite

Menorcan Panda

Tawny Pipit

 Goodnight from Menorca - Scops Owl

Many Thanks for your visit and comments. I’ll catch up with you quite soon.

Quicky Birding

It’s just a hurried post as Another Bird Blog has an appointment and then won’t be around for a day or two. 

This morning I met up at Pilling with Andy so that he could learn the whereabouts of the Skylark nest found on Monday and continue with nest recording in my absence. As there are a good number of Skylarks in the area we hoped we might be able to come across other breeding activity.

The Nest Record Scheme (NRS) gathers vital information on the breeding success of Britain's birds by asking volunteers to find and follow the progress of individual birds' nests. The two pictures below show the information recorded to date on the Skylark nest first found on Monday.

 Nest Record - Skylark

Nest Record - Skylark

 Skylark

To monitor some specially protected species, it's necessary to obtain a Schedule 1 permit in addition to registering as a nest recorder. As with all British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) surveys, the welfare of the birds comes first, and therefore all nest recorders follow the NRS Code of Conduct, a protocol designed to ensure that monitoring a nest does not influence its outcome. 

The data collected for NRS are used to produce trends in breeding performance, which helps to identify species that may be declining because of problems at the nesting stage. These trends are updated every year and published in the BirdTrends report. NRS data also allow measurement of the impacts of pressures such as climate change on bird productivity. 

Both Skylarks were still in the area of the nest, the male singing close by, the female not immediately obvious to us but we quickly looked into the nest and departed. 

Less than 75 yards away was another pair of Skylarks, a pair I’ve been aware of for a while. We watched the female taking nest lining material back to the nest where upon inspection we discovered a single egg, the beginning of nest laying and a reason to complete another nest record for the BTO. 

Nest Record - Skylark

Close by we found Lapwings with just one chick which we located for ringing. It is  one of the very few youngsters and nests to survive the intense farming activity of recent weeks. 

Lapwing chick

There was limited time for birding before heading our separate ways but in an hour so we managed to clock up 8+ singing Skylarks, 4+ “Greenland” Wheatears, 15 Linnet, 2 Kestrel, 1 Buzzard, 1 Whitethroat and 1 Little Owl. 

Little Owl

Another Bird Blog will be back soon from somewhere warm and sunny. Don’t miss it.

Staying Cool But A Nest Or Two

This morning was spent looking for migrant birds but some of those I found were not the normal species associated with late April. 

There was another frost and a layer of ice on the car, not ideal conditions for early morning warblers or little brown jobs so I decided to leave the bush bashing until the air warmed and motored to Conder Green instead. Later I learnt that snow fell in Blackburn, not a million miles from here.

The high tides of winter and spring have filled the pool again so that there’s still very little mud and too much water to attract any numbers of waders. So most if not all of the morning’s waders and wildfowl were in the tidal channels or on the marsh. 

There was a good selection without an enormous number by way of 4 Common Sandpiper, 2 Greenshank, 2 Snipe, 1 Spotted Redshank, 2 Teal, 1 Wigeon, 10 Tufted Duck and 1 Little Egret. Through April there has been something of a passage of Tufted Ducks at Conder Green but now many have departed until Autumn. 

Tufted Duck

At Fluke Hall car park were 3 Whitethroats, 2 males in song and a much quieter female, the female already the object of attention in being chased around the hedgerow by one the males. Just then a Corn Bunting called but when I looked across a party of Corn Buntings had sat up on bramble and tall grass stems. In fact there were 14 or 15 of them but within a few seconds they departed north over the sea wall and lost to view, an unusual bit of Corn Bunting migration so late in April. But then it has been a cool, slow and rather delayed start to summer with yet more wind and rain to come we are told. 

There was also a noticeable increase in Wood Pigeons compared to recent days, in particular a huge flock of about 550+ feeding enthusiastically in a few recently ploughed fields. When once or twice they all took flight the scene resembled one of wintertime and not Spring. Woodpigeons are known to move around in large flocks in winter in search of food and it’s probably fair to say that these were migrants of sorts but wherever they’re going they will be somewhat late in setting up home. 

Woodpigeon

The pair of Mistle Thrush at Fluke Hall have been around all winter but now I’ve found the nest - high on the bough of a beech tree where the female sits on the eggs while the male mostly keeps out of the way. 

Mistle Thrush

Also in or about the wood, 2 Blackcap, 2 Chiffchaff, 2 Greeenfinch, 2 Kestrel, 2 Buzzard, 2 Stock Dove, 1 Jay, 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker and lots of Blackbirds. Two Greylags continue to frequent the pool within the wood where they conduct themselves in a very quiet and unobtrusive manner, and I’m sure they are “at it”. 

Blackbird

A walk along the sea wall required a jacket in the cool, some might say cold westerly breeze, where a single Wheatear, a few Linnets and singing Skylarks proved to be the only passerines. I tracked down one of the pairs of Skylarks and found their nest of three eggs. 

Skylark

Skylark nest

There are more cool birds soon from Another Bird Blog. Don’t miss them.

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Bee Eaters And More

Following a lack of visits for 10 days or more I met up with Andy at Oakenclough this morning for a visit to our ringing site. Andy was in Gibraltar for a week whilst I’d stuck to birding around Pilling and so missed out on visiting Oakenclough. And all of this this during a period when a number of migratory arrivals were probable everywhere! Such are the choices of birders who cannot be in two places at once. 

I was looking forward to hearing about Andy’s ringing and birding trip to Gibraltar and to see his pictures of exotica like Bee Eater, Black Stork, Serin, Black Kite and Bonelli’s Warbler, to name but a few. After being suitably impressed with his bird portraits I could but hope that one day in the future I might see a Bee Eater in the hand. Maybe soon when I holiday in Menorca? 

Bee Eater

This morning lacked colourful Mediterranean birds but there were good numbers of the more mundane green/yellow Willow Warblers on view, some of which may well have seen Gibraltar en route to Lancashire. Andy did mention that in amongst the exciting species Willow Warblers had been the most numerous bird of the previous week! 

By the end of our short session the count was of a minimum of 15 singing males. Female Willow Warblers usually arrive a number of days after males and it is only from then onwards that the competition for mates and nesting sites turns more serious. We supposed that very few females were around due to the male songsters remaining high in the trees in the small piece of woodland already adopted by each one. We barely saw a Willow Warbler near the ground, the mandatory position for the mainly female construction of a nest. 

There was little else in the way of warbler activity this morning apart from a single Blackcap. The Blackcap found our nets as did 3 Lesser Redpolls and 3 Willow Warblers. One of the female redpolls had a distinctive brood patch which signified breeding condition and a probable nest nearby. 

 Willow Warbler

Blackcap

Lesser Redpoll

We received details of a Lesser Redpoll caught here at Oakenclough last month on 14th March, a bird bearing the ring D618555, so not a ring from our own stock. The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) tell us the bird was ringed in Market Drayton, Shropshire on 2nd February 2014, the previous winter to our own capture. This is a duration of 405 days and the distance between the two sites of 116 km. 

The details are rather inconclusive except that we caught D618555 during a period of Spring migration 2015 when Lesser Redpolls were heading north in good numbers. Whether numbers of Lesser Redpolls spend winters in Shropshire I do not know for sure, but suspect not. This individual may have been on migration from south of Shropshire in February 2014. 

“A” marks Oakenclough and “B” Market Drayton. 

Lesser Redpoll - Shropshire to Lancashire

Otherwise birding: 6+ Lesser Redpoll, 2 Grey Wagtail, 2 Common Sandpiper, 2 Pied Wagtail, 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 1 Swallow plus several each of Curlew, Oystercatcher and Lapwing. 

There’s more local birding soon from Another Bird Blog where anything is possible. Even Bee Eaters are not unheard of in Lancashire, so stay tuned.

Linking today to Anni's Birding Blog.