20.06.2024 - Indoor Meeting : Hot and Cold European Breaks

Speaker: Drew Lyness
Reporter: Sue Gale

Drew Lyness is an old friend of the club, and for our June meeting he gave us an entertaining account of two recent birding holidays in Europe. For the first holiday, the cold one, Drew gave us a cautionary tale about a few days in Estonia in mid-March. It started well. Landing in Tallin they could see that much of the winter’s snow had melted, and they made straight for the iconic island of Saaremaa. They met with 1000s of European White-fronted Geese (we see them here in small numbers), plus the occasional Tundra Bean Goose and pairs of Cranes everywhere. Getting there on a ferry with prodigious amounts of food available (!) they could see ice still on the estuaries, plenty of Smew and Goosander, White-tailed Eagles from the deck and a single Rough-legged Buzzard. Once they landed Drew’s friend Jake soon located a raft of Steller’s Eider Ducks. This is the most accessible place to see these special ducks. Inland they searched for Pygmy Owls in the dark before sleeping, only to wake up to the worst storm recorded at that time of year. Half of the island was without electricity and the other half had no water, but the ferry was still running. They made a bolt for it.

Back in Western Estonia they encountered the charming Northern Long-tailed Tits and stunning Scandinavian Nuthatches. Estonia is also good for woodpeckers and they saw the shy White-backed WP and also a Grey-headed. Hoping for some mammals they did spend 8 hours overnight in a hide, but saw nothing, unless you count some prints that Could have been Moose? The next day was very cold. They headed out in a hired car and saw Nutcrackers, Crested Tits and Black Woodpeckers but also managed to get their car stuck on an icy road miles from anywhere. No signs of people and no phone signals. In what seemed to me like a bit of madness Jake apparently set off to walk through the woods to find help, and because he also thought that, foolish Drew decided to go too! By sheer good luck they found a farmhouse with an amiable farmer who drove them back to the car in his tractor and tried to pull them out. He failed and got that stuck too, so a second (ex-military) vehicle was needed to get them all out. I should think they were extremely relieved to get out of Estonia safely! Before leaving they did manage to enjoy the spectacle of a flock of 100-150 adult Grey Herons. Plus one White-tailed Eagle.
After the tea-break, made special as usual by Mary’s excellent cakes, Drew took us to Cyprus. Once again, he and his friends hired a vehicle and did their own thing. Always best if it goes well and you
don’t suffer from fomo. Sometimes you strike lucky and almost at once a bird perched on their table in a beach bar . It was Cyprus’s third ever Mourning Wheatear! They followed this up with a late night drive to a village on top of a steep hill, looking for Cyprus Scops Owls, one of Cyprus’s three ‘endemics’ (Drew wasn’t too impressed by the endemic status of any of them.). I did wonder as this talk went on if they bother with sleep at all. Dawn found them on the Akrotiri peninsula, a famous birding spot but marred these days by a lot of development. Many hotels are being built regardless of the shortage of water for the island. None-the-less there were flocks of Glossy Ibis, Marsh and Broad-billed Sandpipers and a rarity for Cyprus, a Turnstone. One of their party, Amy, was more of a generalist than the others and found Schreibers Fringe-fingered Lizards. In the diminishing area of sand dunes they still encountered Eastern Olivaceous Warblers. Bird Life Cyprus is working in the area, using cattle to graze and restoring a scrape for waders. On the nearby scrape were Cyprus Water Frogs as well as Wood Sandpipers, Red-throated Pipit and Great Spotted Cuckoo! The latter parasitises Magpies here – much larger than the victims in the UK.
The second ‘endemic’, the Cyprus Wheatear, was found next day, but this one is actually a migrant, so hard to explain. Here they had Eleanora’s Falcons flying so close you could feel the air move with their wingbeats, and also lovely Alpine Swifts. The latter were actually catching nesting material in mid-air. They also saw the rarest bird here – a Griffon Vulture, of which 25 have been re-introduced from Spain. A quick trip to a sewage works – a must on birding trips – brought a Great Snipe, but also by the roadside a Blunt-nosed Viper = the most deadly snake in Europe.
Day 3 took them to Cape Greca for the third so-called endemic. This is the Cyprus Warbler, that winters west of the Red Sea in Egypt and Sudan. Further inland they still saw plenty of evidence of hunting, even though it is strictly illegal. Then they made their way back to Akrotiri for a lovely male Citrine Wagtail, a couple of Little Crakes and Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters. On their last day they headed to the centre of Greek Cyprus, and Mount Olympus, which is wooded and home to the very small Masked Shrike. Also the Short-toed Tree-creeper, a local sub-species and the Trudos Lizard. The Cyprus Coal Tit is larger than ours and has a big black bib. It also has a different song. Amy found them a Snake-eyed Lizard, and to finish there they had a Cretzshmar’s Bunting. A quick try at sea-watching, which they had been told was a waste of time, brought no less than 15 Scopolis Shearwaters.
We did enjoy hearing about Drew’s adventures as well as the birds he saw. I think I might plump for the Cyprus trip myself – marginally safer? Many thanks to Drew.