Birding Back To Normal

There’s a new header picture for the blog, an Egyptian Vulture I photographed in Menorca on the fine sunny morning of 13th May. Here’s another one for David in Canada. He’s more used to seeing Turkey Vultures. 

Egyptian Vulture

After two weeks of shirt sleeves and shorts Birding Menorca Style I’ve been itching to bird the local patch wearing similar attire but when it rained all Sunday night and into most of Monday morning I wasn’t too hopeful. Soon after lunch the sun came out although it remained cold and windy so I set off for Pilling wearing a scarf, winter jacket and a warm hat. The dashboard temperature showed 11⁰, a major reduction on the 25⁰ of the Mediterranean a week ago. 

Via the telephone Andy had told me of the failure of our two Skylark nests the previous week. One had failed at the chick stage with 3 tiny, dead youngsters in a saturated nest; the other nest reached the stage of 3 eggs before it too was abandoned, a victim of the unsettled, cool and often wet month of a not untypical UK May. Both pairs of Skylarks were still around today and showing all the signs of starting all over again very close to their original nests. But the strong wind blowing along and over the sea wall made it impossible to properly study what these two pairs and a number of others were doing. 

I found 3 Little Egrets feeding in the drainage ditch and along the fence line a single Wheatear and a couple of Linnets. 

Wheatear

I’d missed the highest point of the high tide but the water was still well up near the sea wall. This explained the large numbers of Dunlin and Ringed Plover roosting in the ploughed field, approximately 800 Dunlin and 70 Ringed Plovers, all hunkered down in the deep furrows the farmer had left for his potato crop but where the height of the furrows gave some protection against the cold wind. It was a sight I don’t think I have ever seen before during many years of birding and not one I would expect to see in the supposedly warm month of May. 

As I shaped to take a picture of this unusual spectacle the whole lot spooked and flew off over the sea wall as the reason came into sight, a male Peregrine taking a dive or two into the flock. Its attempts at a meal a failure the Peregrine flew south and out of sight. 

Peregrine

A number of Swallows and House Martins fed over windswept Worm Pool but no more than twenty in total with just one or two Swifts overhead. 

I moved closer to the shelter of the woodland where I clocked 2 Buzzard, 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 1 Mistle Thrush, 2 Song Thrush and any number of Blackbirds. In song - 3 Whitethroat, 2 Blackcap, 1 Chiffchaff and 1 Lesser Whitethroat together with 1 Greenfinch and a good number of Goldfinches. 

On the car park fields: 20 Shelduck, 12 Lapwing, 2 Oystercatcher, 2 Pied Wagtail.  

There's more rain and wind forecast for tomorrow. Now where’s that holiday brochure?

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

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.