Monday 28 March 2016

Mallorca in early March (Part 2)

12/03/2016
This was only our second ever trip to Mallorca, the first being about 4 years ago, before my 'obsession' as my wife calls it of photographing birds. I prefer to call it an overwhelming and uncontrollable need!
Anyway, I said in Mallorca part 1 it wasn't specifically a birding trip so we did visit places not known for their birding. One of these was the Talayotic site of Ses Païsses, just outside Arta in north eastern Mallorca. My wife has a keen interest in things ancient and archaeological and we'd managed to miss this during our visit in 2012.
The talaiots or talayots, are Bronze Age Megalithic structures on the islands of Minorca and Mallorca. There are at least 274 of them dating from between 1,300–900BC. The good thing about this one was that there were a number of Serin in the trees around the site!
Talayotic site of Ses Païsses
Joking aside, it is well worth a visit and with a 2€ entrance fee, not exactly costly. 
There were indeed Serin at the site and a Firecrest which nearly landed on my head but I didn't manage to get a photo of that. The Serin were obvious by their calls but still very difficult to locate in the canopy. I usually only managed to find them when they flew up and circled before landing again; if I spotted where they'd landed I could track them down. 
 After the ancient site we headed out on some directions taken from the internet on what was listed as a good birding route on a minor road called Carretera Camidels Racó just to the east of Arta which leads to the coast at Cala Mitjana. The first section through farmland certainly contained a lot of small birds, including various finches- particularly Greenfinches, Goldfinches and Serin. This is also supposed to be a good place to see Cirl bunting but I didn't see any. 
Following the track from a parking area at the far end takes you down to the coast. There were numerous Yellow-legged gulls on the beach at Cala Mitjana.
Yellow-legged gulls at Cala Mitjana

Where the dunes met the beach I noticed my first Thekla larks, 5 in fact, and spent a happy 30+ minutes following them around trying to get a decent shot. They weren't too bad to approach but would occasionally spook and fly off but usually only 20 or 30 metres away, so I could start my stalking all over again.

On the return walk I spotted an Audouin's gull trying to get a drink from a puddle of fresh water but it was immediately disturbed by some people walking past. I sat quietly on a rock with a clear view of the puddle and waited until the walkers had passed, sure enough the gull landed again and I got a few shots of it.
A little further back around the headland I saw a pair of Audouin's gulls attracted to another puddle, this was obviously the way to find these gulls, find a freshwater puddle!


Quite a few orchids lined the track on the hillside, I photographed a couple in the hope of identifying them later but I am a novice when it comes to orchids.
Possibly Ophrys tenthredinifera, the Sawfly Orchid.
Orchid, sp unknown. Maybe a variant on the above?
The Bóquer Valley. 13/03/2016
 Mid March is a bit too early for the spring (and autumn!) migrants for which this valley is best known, but it had the potential to offer some good views of resident species.
We'd followed some overly complicated directions from the internet to get to (and miss) the car park for the start of the walk, but in reality it is very straightforward. The rough ground used as a car park is at a roundabout on the  Ma-2200 ring road around Port de Polenca (the Avinguda de Bocchoris is off the same roundabout). Park here and follow the path at the back of the car park.
It got off to a good start with a very obliging Black redstart but we never saw any Cirl buntings, supposedly worth looking out for here. A little further on we saw a distant Blue rock thrush but it was impossible to get any nearer as it was down in the valley beyond a wall, I managed a record shot only.
Black redstart ♀
A view of the Boquer Valley
 A pair of Sardinian warblers were feeding just off the path and I followed them around the scrub for several minutes taking photos. The male was a bit more secretive so I didn't manged many shots of him.
Sardinian warbler ♀
As the path nears the sea it slopes down quite steeply in places and a multitude of separate tracks break away from it where people have chosen their own route. Some of these tracks are much better than others but it seemed impossible to tell which was going to be the best other than by trial and error. We sat and had a rest just before reaching the beach - we'd managed to do the walk on the same day that an organised community beach clean was going on which meant there were already 50+ people in the little bay where the paths were heading.
Scanning the sky for the Raven I could hear calling I saw my first Black vulture, it was slowly gaining height above the mountains surrounding the bay. In total we saw 5 (or 6, it was difficult keeping tracks on each one). I took some shots but they were a long way off and badly silhouetted against the bright sky.
Black vulture
On the return, retracing our steps, we had a decent view of a Booted eagle and a fine male Stonechat briefly perched nearby while we had lunch. I'd hoped to see a Balearic warbler which can often be seen on sections of the walk apparently, but like the Cirl buntings, we didn't manage to find one.
Booted eagle
 Stonechat ♂
Part 3 later - S'Albufera reserve, Ses Salines etc.

Monday 21 March 2016

Mallorca in early March (Part 1)

Mallorca is how it is written on my map so I'm sticking with that - if what I've read is correct it became Majorca for those that couldn't pronounce the 'll' - which I read is pronounced as a 'y' so it ought to be Mayorca??
Anyway, enough of that, we had 10 days there from the 9th to 18th March. It wasn't organised as a birding trip but I would seek out what I could when I was there. The best time to catch the spring migration seems to be around the last week in April but that wasn't possible for us, so we settled on these dates to have a break from the cold grey skies of the UK.
Leaving Gatwick in rain and the temperature barely into double figures, we arrived at Palma airport - in rain with temperatures barely into double figures. I wasn't expecting glorious sunshine and 25°C all the time but had thought that traveling the best part of 1000 miles south would offer some improvement on the climate. However, we couldn't change it so made the best of it.
10th March
The first full day started wet but the rain did stop intermittently and we even saw the sun on occasions, but it was still only about 11°C.  We'd stopped at the edge of the road (not something that you can do very often we found, so many of the roads had nowhere to pull over so it could be quite frustrating if something was spotted when you were driving, it could be nearly a kilometer before you could safely stop), not far from the town of Campanet in the north of the island. A verge under a stone wall had recently been strimmed and several different birds were feeding in the debris. First to catch my eye was a female Black redstart.
I quickly lost interest in that when I saw what I was convinced was a Whinchat. I have photographed these in Kent, usually on their autumn migration, but they are difficult to approach, so if this one came close it might give me my best shot of one. It did come close and revealed itself to be a female Stonechat, there had been something about its posture (1st photo) that had made me think Whinchat, but seeing it close by it was obviously not (2nd photo).

In fact I never saw a Whinchat at all which was a bit disappointing.
The strimmed edge had also attracted Greenfinches, a Robin and a couple of Siskin which I didn't see but my wife did. The light wasn't good by now and also, despite being on a small road in what can only be described as a 'one horse hamlet', some form of  vehicle came past about every 60 seconds - or more accurately within 10 seconds of the birds returning after being scared off by the previous vehicle. I made a note to return in better light to have another go.
11th March.
Great excitement in the morning, sunshine could be seen through the slats on the louvered doors so we wasted little time in getting out. Driving along scenic tiny lanes through olive groves and cultivated fields I spotted something in the young corn. Unusually there was somewhere to pull in and get the car off the road, at the entrance to a gated and locked driveway. I walked back and could see larks moving about but they were too far away for a photograph. A male Stonechat was flying down from a low branch but again was a bit far off. I looked up, having wandered rather further from the car than intended, to see another car behind mine waiting to access the drive - I couldn't believe it, the gates didn't look like they'd been used all winter and within 5 minutes of me stopping I was in someones way!
View to the Tramuntana mountains along the gated driveway.
We moved on and found another place to stop, in a field gateway that clearly hadn't been used in some time, it was overgrown and looked like the gates would need a bit of work to open so hopefully we wouldn't be in the way here.
A couple of Ravens were cawing overhead and a Black redstart was looking suspiciously like it was feeding young in a very gnarled olive tree but it seemed much too early in the season? We waited but it never returned to the tree again so possibly it had just found somewhere to eat its grub in peace.


 Other highlights for the day were a Cattle egret, a Blackcap feeding on as yet unidentified berries in the village of Mancor de la Vall, and best of all a Booted eagle flying overhead, a bird of prey we saw quite often.

A last note here about finding peace and quiet - we'd parked the car and walked along a gravel road to nowhere in particular. Female Black redstarts were feeding everywhere you looked, a lovely male Stonechat was flitting around, and Crag martins were swooping and wheeling over a nearby field of sheep. It was blissful, the only noise was of the sheep bells tinkling in the valley below. I sat on a rock and soaked up the sun and waited quietly as the birds started to accept me and venture a little closer. 
Within 10 minutes a large tipper lorry pulled up immediately behind me, engine running, the driver got out and locked the gates he'd come through, he wasn't there more than 3 or 4 minutes but the peace had been shattered and the scent of the pine trees replaced by diesel and exhaust fumes. 

Part two coming soon, with Thekla lark, Audouin's gulls and Black vultures.