Just wondered.... you don't mention any mammals... are there any there... hmmm probably a silly question - there must be.
D
Our week's break in Menorca was not intended to be a birding trip, but I had persuaded my wife to allow my scope and bins to accompany us. With luck I'd get a day or two's birding in whilst there.
We landed at Mao midday on the 1st of September and the first bird of the trip was house sparrow, hardly an encouraging start.Once through customs and after the obligatory hour waiting for the hire car company to decide to serve us, we were off on the drive to Port Addaia, which is on the NE coast near to Arenal D'en Castell. Various raptors were seen by the non-drivers during the trip, but as only the driver (me) was a birder they had to go un-indentified, other than the one Egyptian vulture I managed to see. This was the same whenever we went for a drive, I'd be informed that there was a BoP off to the right or just behind us and be unable to stop to get a look at it.
The resort of Port Addaia is small and quiet, with the actual port area being someway from the sea on an inlet which goes on for a good few kilometres before terminating in the Salinas at Montgofre. There were good numbers of spotted flycatchers and Sardinian warblers in the local area, with occasional flyovers by raven, booted eagle and kites (black and red), in fact with the kites we saw more black than red throughout the trip. Best sighting in the resort were a group of around 30 little egrets that flew over the resort one evening on their way to their roost.
As we had been to Menorca about 10 years ago there were a couple of visits to places we all liked from before, La Vall and the Algendar Gorge.
La Vall
We visited La Vall as a family, and how that area has changed in a decade. The first change was on reaching the turn to the estate on the Cituadella-Cala Morell road, a large sign is there now with an illuminated display telling you that La Vall was open, and I expect also informing you when it is closed. This did not look good, but we pressed on and reached the area where there used to be a couple of lads taking your money to enter the estate, nothing there now. The drive down the hill to the parking area was no longer through open countryside, both sides of the track had stone walls just high enough so that you couldn't see anything in the fields from the car, and there were no places to pull in in order to scan the fields there. On reaching the car park we found the place much larger than before and there was now a team of attendants organising the parking and obviously having charge of the display on the roadside sign, parking was free as well.
There were now reasonable toilets on site, rather than 1 rather decayed chemical toilet, but no other facilities. The walk from the car park to the beach was completely bird-free, not even a subsong being noted. On reaching the steps down to the beach I was knocked back by how many people there were there,well in excess of 300, and to think on our first visit there were less than a dozen other people on the beach. The increase in numbers using the beach has affected the birdlife by the beach, no more zitting cisticolas or stonechats by the edge of the sand and very few gulls out on the water. After settling my OH and son down on the beach I took myself off to find some birds. Following a path from the beach into the estate proper, rather than the car-park, I soon found several woodchat shrikes, including what had to be a parent and young bird, which was actively begging for food from the adult. I did manage to find stonechat but was completely unsuccessful in my search for zitting cisticolas. A distant hoopoe was the first of the trip and proved very elusive, as did a tawny pipit seen by the track and followed for a short way as I tried to get the scope set up to grab a picture, as is normal for me the bird decided to disappear as soon as I had scope set and camera out.
A single red-rumped swallow was seen making it's way inland so I reckon it may have been an early migrant. Fly overs by red kite and raven also enlivened the afternoon but the heat which was oppressive to start with, became too much and I had to go back to the beach and more water, I'd finished the litre that I took with me.
Algendar Gorge
My wife and I visited this area without our son, the approach to the gorge has changed a lot in the intervening years, gone was the old wooden gates, replaced by a steel gate, although the low wall you have to negotiate is till there. The main difference though is in how close houses are to the gates, where once you had to walk for a wee while to reach the gates from the built-up area, now you could throw a stone and hit houses without any difficulty. Again the heat was a bit much so we didn't venture very far along the gorge, but we did manage moorhen and Cetti's warbler as well as mallard at the foot of the gorge as well as pallid swift further into the gorge.
Other sites I managed to get to for a bit of solo birding were Cap de Favaritx, early morning where I got the only lifer of the trip, a Thekla lark. Seen to fly across the road in front of me I managed to scramble up the bank by the road and perch precariously scanning the field with my bins, any thought of using the scope was out of the question. Luckily I got onto the bird quite quickly and narrowed the id down to crested lark or Thekla lark. The streaks on the breast, were they diffuse or distinct? never having seen the birds together I couldn't say, how about beak shape? again not sure, then when the bird flew up and over my head to disappear into the distance I got the clincher and was satisfied with Thekla as the id, the underwing coverts were a very pale grey rather than the reddish colour of a crested lark. A small charm of goldfinches and a party of linnets in the same field also added to the list for the morning, as did 4 kites which were having fun swooping on a roost of ravens not far from the gates to the estate. Sadly there was very little seen on the sea, a handful of gulls which even with 50x on the scope I couldn't get anymore of an id on. The walk back to the car by the gates gave me more stonechat, kestrel and hoopoe to add to the list.
The Salinas at Montgofre were a bit of a let-down, all I saw were redshank and common sandpipers but I did reach them by walking from the resort rather than by car. The Government on Menorca are actively reinstating the old Cami de Cavalls (bridle paths) which were built by the French to allow the rapid transmission of reports of invasion fleets etc to be sent across the island. There is one of these paths that runs from Es Grau round to Fornells and beyond. At one point it reaches Port Addaia and I had seen this track on Google Earth so decided to try and follow it. This proved very easy, at regular intervals there are wooden posts with waymarks and the gates for the path are all built to the same style, so it is easy to scan across a large expanse of ground picking out the waymarks or the gate in a wall in the distance. The walk down from Addaia gave me a very early booted eagle (it was about 7.45am), as well as several grey herons which took exception to me looking over the salinas. Numerous Cetti's and Sardinian warblers also enliven the morning. I did note several dragonflies and damselflies but as I'd left behind the id guide I've no idea what they were.
An afternoon stroll along the cliffs to the west of Arenal D'en Castell gave us short but good views of blue rock thrush and a single Audouin's gull, loafing about on the rocks at the foot of the cliff. Sadly this was one of those times when I hadn't brought the scope so I couldn't get a decent shot of either bird. I did manage to digi-bin both birds but neither set of photos are worth the effort, even as record shots they are poor.
SO a non-birding trip but it did give a species count of 32 including 1 life tick, but not enough in the way of waders for me.
The scenery looks superb Keith. Well done on your Lifer, though I'm sure I'd not recognise a Thekla Lark if it bit me on the nose
Just wondered.... you don't mention any mammals... are there any there... hmmm probably a silly question - there must be.
D
The only mammals we saw were bats, small chaps that were obviously roosting in the roof space of one of the villas. We had an enjoyable evening sitting in a bar eating our meal, counting how many bats emerged from the roof, got to 20 before losing count. From the size of them I'd say they were comparable to a pipistrelle in terms of size, but that's as far as my bat id powers take me.
We had more luck with reptiles this year, I saw 2 different geckos, or rather 2 geckos that were different colour patterns so may have been different species, and we saw loads of lizards most of them too fast for us to get a picture but they were remarkable similar to the common lizards that I've seen in the UK so I'd guess on them being the same species.