Corfu 9-16 September (1 Viewer)

Just a brief note about my trip to Corfu, my second visit. This was not a birding trip and the birding was to be casual, kind of let's see what's around.

We flew from Edinburgh to Corfu and were staying at the Villa Karmar studios in Dassia. This part of Corfu is densely wooded with Olives, Oaks, Walnuts, Figs and Ash among others. There were abundant large and showy butterflies including Swallowtail, Clouded Yellow, Cleopatra, Camberwell Beauty, Southern Comma and many others I couldn't identify. Hornets were quite common, not something you normally see in Scotland and various social wasps were much more common than in recent years back home. I saw a few reptiles, mostly Balkan Wall Lizards and the only wild mammals seen were bats and a roadkill Hedgehog.

We hired a car for three days but this coincided with a period of rain storms, and we are talking about torrential rain. So what birds did we see? I won't list them all but here are some highlights:

Booted Eagle - pale phase from road just north of Peteleia also two large raptors soaring around Pantokrator were probably Booted Eagles.
Scops Owl - common in the woods around Dassia, detected by call.
Alpine Swift - flocks calling overhead at dusk.
Hoopoe - heard once in grassy fields near the beach at Dassia
Red-rumped Swallow - often seen, less common than Barn Swallow or House Martin.
Black-eared Wheatear - common around the monastery at Pantokrator
Willow Warbler - seen and heard in various places.
Firecrest - seen in a mixed flock of Great, Coal and Blue Tits at Pantokrator
Spotted Flycatcher - as common as it used to be in the UK
Semi-collared Flycatcher - one male in bushes by the road just north of Peteleia.
Eurasian Jay - the commonest corvid
Corn Bunting - seen in fields along the road.

Species diversity was low and the birds seemed particularly shy. I was disappointed to miss Western Rock Nuthatch but will go back to Greece soon.

David

Thanks for that . corfu is poorly covered on ornithological terms so any report is useful .

more likely to be short toed eagle, (breed on pantokrator and always somewhere around the place)

or one of the incredibly annoying plethora of buzzards.(they're annoying as they frequently look like something else)

rock nuthatch are very difficult to find. black headed bunting, black eared wheat ear, and subalpine warbler are very easy on pantokrator in june.

hooded crow and jackdaw are also common on pantokrator.

turtle dove are hard to see but very easy to hear in the pantokrator agios spiridonas area.

sardinian warbler. fan tailed warbler, are pretty much every where as are woodchat shrike in the north.

red backed shrike pretty easy to find but damned impossible to get close enough for a pic round the arillas area. perregrine also resident in this area.
lesser grey shrike usually found in the fields close to any water sources.

crag martins can be seen round angelo kastro.

bee eaters had about 9 in the sidari area this year but all flying high and calling.

scops are everywhere. alpine swifts particularly good in corfu town itselfeither early or late, but around all day. though they can turn up in small groups as do common swifts anywhere within a mile or so of the coast. you could be watching 1000 of each at roosting time on a quiet day in corfu town however.

hoopoe only seen one in 2, 2 week trips and that flew past my hotel room about 6.30 one morning.

golden oriole also in the korrison area. and flamingoes have tried to breed for the last 2 years at alikes lefkimmis.

hope that helps you out for the next one. my next trip end of june

if you like butterflies try the path from lafki to paleo perithia across pantokrator for 2 tailed pasha. much of the bird life is round there too

captaincarot

Thanks, they may have been Short-toed or Buzzards we saw plenty of the latter. September is a bit different from June, I think May would be the best month for Corfu but both my visits have been in September. I think I am going back to Greece in May, probably to the eastern mainland so hopefully catch up with Rock Nuthatch, among others, then.

David

They do get booted eagle but like golden you have to drop on Lucky when one has drifted over from Albania as both species breed over there