Bloody cold in the morning: 6C at 6.30am with a stiff northerly breeze and scattered clouds still hanging on to the mountain after yesterday's rain.
Chiffchaff and
Swifts out of the window,
Firecrest and
Chaffinch at the tennis club, then again at the back
Black Redstart, Common Redstart, Hoopoe, White Wagtail, Blackcap, House Martin.
After lunch G and I departed for our short expedition, the first of its kind since the beginning of lockdown: we were going to have a look at some sites roughly an hour's drive from here. En route we had a
Great Spotted Woodpecker, Zitting Cisticolas, a
Roller or two, the
Yellow Wagtail of a few days ago in exactly the same place on the same wire!
Corn Buntings everywhere, then approaching our first destination
3 Short-toed Eagles in a 1 km stretch of road.
When we reached the lookout on a ravine along a long and bumpy track we were dismayed to notice that there were zero Bee-eaters, when the place used to teem with them. Instead it was pretty dead: there was a
Kestrel, a
Cuckoo calling some distance away,
Goldfinches, a
Sardinian Warbler warbling somewhere below the track (no.88 on my list!), and then, in a galaxy far far away something which made us hold our breath for a few minutes until we had to admit that we were looking at a
Peregrine Falcon (no. 89) and not at a Lanner.
We decided to take a shortcut to the next site, a track which winds through lovely hilly countryside but is in very bad shape. Our remaining car being a 4WD and having driven this same track many times on we went, only to realise that since we had last been here, probably a year or so, the situation had deteriorated to the point that we had to turn back and use the normal road.
Turning off it onto yet another track which starts in a tiny hilltop hamlet, a
Common Redstart flew in front of us. Then we drove to another lookout on another ravine where we saw yet another
Kestrel, another
Short-toed Eagle, a couple of
Jays and heard Golden Oriole,
Cirl Bunting, Long-tailed Tit and
Nightingale.
Driving back towards home we stopped in our local patch (the
Yellow Wagtail was still there! Must be a decoy
), where we had
Skylark,
Crested Lark, Bee-eater, Greenfinch, and finally a long overdue
Red-backed Shrike (no.90!).
Climbing up the mountain we saw a
Hobby, 2
Honey Buzzards and a
Subalpine Warbler.
Very nice! :king:
I want to say that I'll probably stop using this thread as from Wednesday when the lockdown will officially be over. I may start another one along the lines of Rosbifs and Wari, we'll see!
