Dermot Breen's Blog: yellow wagtail

Wednesday, 30 January 2019

Cyprus 2nd September 2019

I finally connected with Demoiselle Crane at Akrotiri Salt Lake first thing in the morning. A group of fourteen birds were preening and resting up out on the lake near the north-east side where a freshwater stream enters the lake. The group also contained three juveniles. Very attractive looking birds and brilliant to catch up with the species. The heat haze already early in the morning along with the distance weren't very conductive for photography but I got some very nice views through the scope. I didn't want to get too near the birds as they would obviously be pretty tired having probably flown to here straight from Turkey at least and would be soon be on their way south to the other side of the Mediterranean. Nice backup in the area with at least 10 Eleonora's Falcons, 2 Pallid and 10 Marsh Harriers sitting out in the middle of the salt flats.
I spent the rest of the day visiting a few sites further west of Larnaca all the way up to Peyia north of Paphos produced not a whole lot of interest to be honest.

Demoiselle Cranes with Grey Herons.

Demoiselle Cranes

Demoiselle Cranes with Eleonora's Falcon.

Pallid Harrier

Eleonora's Falcon and Pallid Harrier.

Eleonora's Falcons and Pallid Harrier.

Eleonora's Falcon

Glossy Ibis

Ringed Plover

Juvenile Collared Pratincole

Yellow Wagtail flava

Yellow Wagtail thunbergi

Yellow Wagtail feldegg

Juvenile Yellow Wagtail

Agios Georgios Church

Tombs craved into the rock.

Inside one of the tombs.

Sunday, 27 May 2018

Taiwan 24th March 2018

I started off the day with a pre-dawn walk around the hotel to finally try to see a Savanna Nightjar. We had these birds calling at night around every hotel that we had stayed at so far in the trip. They seem to have no problem living right in the middle of the biggest most lit-up and noisy cities. Several males could be heard calling above most city streets at any given time during the night time. I finally managed to lock eyes on one bird on the top of a high rise building at about 0400 hours.
Come the dawn we travelled to the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology. We spent a few hours on the university grounds and the adjacent Jing-si Lake park.
We were now in the far south of the island and we travelled nearly as far south as possible to Longluan Lake Nature Center. There were bus loads of Taiwanese tourists visiting the visitor centre overlooking the lake which was really a large relatively quiet reservoir. The main reason for coming so far south was to catch up with Styan's Bulbul or Taiwan Bulbul, one of the few remaining endemics left for the trip. This species has undergone a long term decline due to hybridisation with the introduced Light-vented/Chinese Bulbul and is now largely restricted to the extreme south of the island.
We headed back north to our hotel but stopped at the large river at Xinpi. Most the large rivers that we had seen were confined to very small channels due to low flow rates. It's quite clear that a huge amount of rain must fall to fill up these rivers from time to time. It was a little discouraging to see that most of rivers were subjected to large scale industrial gravel extraction. We had great views of a small flock of Black-faced Spoonbills here. The species is listed as endangered by the IUCN. While the numbers have increased in recent years, globally the population still only stands at just under 4000 individuals. Around half of this winters in Taiwan. We also had a colour ringed bird which I'm still trying to pin down.
While the Styan's Bulbul was the only new endemic for the day I also ticked Savanna Nightjar, Maroon Oriole, Whistling Green Pigeon, Eastern Marsh Harrier and Black-faced Spoonbill.