It dawned wet and windy and the dark skies were full of large flocks of recently risen hirundines and they literally dripped from the wires in the village. Most circled before climbing up to the cloud base and making a strike north for nicer weather.
A male Collared Flycatcher and both Whitethroat species were
the only other notables seen on a short walk before we left. It was not far to the main Porto Largos
lagoon and we stood in the light rain and scanned through the waders which gave
us a flock of 25 Little Stints, two creeping Temminck’s Stints, seven Curlew Sandpipers,
three Dunlin, 80 Ruff, six smoky Spotted Redshanks, Redshank, Common Snipe and
a selection of Plovers with Ringed, Kentish, LRP and Grey Plover.
Six Black-necked Grebes bobbed around and a party of 22
White-winged Black Terns rocketed through without a pause for quick dip.
The rain strengthened but our resolve to push on saw us doing
our best down at Mandra Marsh. All three
marsh terns were out in the rain with Little Gulls and Smiffy was happy once
again while I searched the pools and found five Wigeon, ten Garganey, 15
Shoveler and our first pair of Pintail.
There were Squaccos and Purple Herons but the rain drove us back inside
the van and we set off along the coast road in the hope of finding some beach
waders but there was just driftwood and waves. Spotted Redshanks paddled round like oversized Phalaropes.
Spotted Redshank 
Black-winged Stilt 
Black-winged Stilt
The port of Avdiron gave us two Little Terns on the rocks
and every sailing ship in the harbour was covered in hundreds of hirundines. They were all huddling up for shelter but occasionally
would dread out in a twittering mass.
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| Barn Swallow, House Martin, Sand Martin and Red-rumped Swallow |
With nowhere to have lunch we came back along the coast and stopped
again at Mandra where a break in the weather gave us a Bittern hunkered down in
the sedges, so low in fact that you could only see the top of the head and eye
ball to start with. Even the Squaccos
around it looked big! It soon lumbered
off.
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| Squaccos |
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| Bittern |
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| Bittern |
The saltworks at Porto Largos should have given us a good
circuit but the track was undrivable and we had to resort to checking the and
nearest the gates but they were covered in Ruff and amongst them we picked up
ten Dunlin, three Little Stints, seven Grey Plovers and six Oystercatchers. Closer to us we found two Stone-curlews on
the shingle and Calandra Larks spiralled down and actually sat up on clods for
us to watch. They are equally impressive
on the deck.
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| Stone-curlew |
With brightening weather we stopped at the river mouth in
Porto Largo where at last we found 12 Sanderling scuttling along the sand bar
with eight Dunlin. There was a fantastic
feeding frenzy at the conjunction with Yelkouan Shearwaters plunge diving in
amongst the mixed flocks of terns and gulls while Great Egrets and Grey Herons
strode amongst them.
On the river itself there were six dashing Greenshank and
two Common Sandpipers and a calling Kingfisher did the decent thing and perched
up for a short while. A Hoopoe flew
across with food to a nest in the pines and a Sardinian Warbler rattled. However a quietly singing warbler in the same
Bramble clump had a us fooled for a short while before resolving itself into a
Moustached Warbler. An unexpected find
as the wintering birds should be long gone by now.
Back to Porto Lago lagoon where the waders had largely
dispersed but there was a fine summer plumaged Bar-tailed Godwit and 29
Dalmatian Pelicans. A Short-toed Lark
was scurrying around in the spartina where two female Marsh Harriers were
resting up.
A quick pop back to the rooms and then off inland to the
Komestatos River flood plain. Our first
walk took us across damp meadows where large herds of Water Buffalo were being shepherded. Six Cattle Egrets were walking through them
and the roving beasts put up several Squaccos and Purple Herons and a flock of
41 Glossy Ibises whiffled in from up high. Garganey were on the pools and there
were once again three flavours of flava Wagtail tripping between hooves.
Garganey 
Garganey
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| Western Cattle Egret and Jackdaw |
Flocks of Wood Sandpipers were pushed ahead of the Buffalo
and we reckoned over 200 were on the move but the Spur-winged Lapwings were not
going anywhere and breed here. A lone drake Pintail were found and a Golden Oriole was
tantalising us from the towering Poplars.
There were a few raptors with high flying Booted and Short-toed
Eagles but our second Merlin of the trip was somewhat of a surprise. This tiny immature male made a couple of
dashing passes sending Wagtails scattering.
Onwards and into the farmland where we went from zero
Red-footed Falcons to 13 in a matter of minutes as a mixed flock of sexes and
ages hunted a ploughed field with typical agility. Subsequent sky watching gave
us Booted and Short-toed Eagles above us and then a bonus Greater Spotted Eagle
gave us a few lazy circles.
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| Greater Spotted Eagle |
A Quail was singing so close to us that we could not believe that it remained invisible and further along we heard another two singing out on the rubbly grassland where we were looking for Isabelline Wheatears with no joy. There were both Eastern Black-eared and Northern Wheatears but the habitat looked so different to where I see Izzies on Lesvos.
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| New agricultural crop for me... Kiwi Fruit! |
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| Kiwi Fruit! |
Shrikes were dotted about and five Red-backs and a Woodchat were found but the small birds were keeping low as a female Montagu’s Harrier was doing the rounds. It was a good way to end the day but perhaps we would get another chance of the Wheatear the next day.
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