Stonechat island (part 2)

After such a successful day with our guides, we didn't really do much for the remainder of our short stay on the island other than walking around the area we were staying.  Here, the elegant Audouin's Gull was the only gull present and seemed to be quite common so we got to spend a lot of time admiring them.  We spent even more time, though, watching the antics of a fearless immature Shag which was chasing fish amongst the bathing holidaymakers off Can Pastilla beach.  It even seemed to be deliberately using the tourists by chasing the fish towards them so that they would then panic (the fish, not the bemused bathers!) and swim straight back into its beak.  I also identified a few butterflies I'd not seen before, such as Cleopatra, Southern Gatekeeper and this Southern Brown Argus which was posing so nicely, it was just asking to have its photo taken.

Stonechat island (part 1)

Such was the view in the Serra de Tramuntana at the end of a full day's birding the western half of Mallorca with local guides Cristina and José Luis of Balears Wildlife.  I went there last weekend together with a birding friend with the main target of seeing Balearic Warbler, which is endemic to the Balearic Islands.  Our first stop, therefore, was a rocky headland on the Bay of Palma with the typical garrigue habitat where this species can be found.  The first birds of the day were Stonechats, which were all over the island and had obviously had a very successful breeding season going by the numerous fledglings we encountered.  It didn't take long, though, before we got brief but good looks at two, very close Balearic Warblers with another new species for me, Thekla Lark, singing all around us.  After that, we did a big, counterclockwise loop stopping at various places for Blue Rock Thrush, Eleonora's Falcon, Booted Eagle, Stone Curlew, Red-legged Partridge, Short-toed Lark, Cirl Bunting, and both Black and Griffon Vultures.  The highlight for me was finally getting to visit the world-famous S'Albufera nature reserve, where two of the reserve's flagship species, Purple Swamphen and Red-knobbed Coot, were unbelievably easy to observe as we crossed a bridge over one of the canals.

 
A Common Nightingale (below), usually one of Europe's skulkiest birds, seemed to have taken a leaf out of the same book as it sat out on a branch and sang in full view alongside the entrance track.  Marbled Teal, Purple and Squacco Herons, a lone Spoonbill, and a family of recently-fledged Woodchat Shrikes rounded off our time at S'Albufera before we headed into the beautiful mountains for my third and final new species of the day.  Our guides were pretty confident we would see it at Cuber reservoir but, arriving there in the scorching heat of the afternoon with virtually no bird-activity at all, I was not convinced.  Sure enough, though, by the time we reached the dam and some welcome shade, we had seen at least three, male Moltoni's Warblers, with more of them scolding from the bushes.  By the time we returned to our hotel, we had been out in the field for twelve hours and racked up an impressive total of 71 species.

Frustrating fritillaries

Today, I visited the Holzwarchetal nature reserve in the very east of Belgium for a spot of butterflying.   I first discovered this reserve thanks to a fellow birder+butterflier last spring, when we spent the whole day photographing Violet Coppers.  Today, though, I was hoping to find some fritillaries as two different species had been reported there recently.  Fritillaries have to be my favourite group of European butterflies due to their intricate patterns and often highly localised distributions, which also make them some of the most difficult ones to see.  There are at least sixteen different species in Belgium, of which I have only seen two so far.  My field guide mentions that they need a lot of nectar and groups of them can often be found on flowers, where they are easy to observe and photograph.  Well, the fritillaries in the Holzwarche valley have not read the instructions manual!  I kept seeing them fluttering around but they steadfastly refused to land on anything and some of them looked like they might be migrating as they hurried past me up the valley side and out of sight into the trees.  Those that were hanging around, were sticking low in the vegetation in an area which was fenced off so I couldn't even get close to them, not that identifying one in flight would have been possible anyway.  The first hour and a half was very frustrating, therefore, until one finally landed not too far away and just long enough for me to take a single picture.  Amazingly, that one photograph turned out not only to be in focus, but also to show the characteristic, light-centred rings of the rare Bog Fritillary!

There may have been another species present but this was the only one which stopped long enough for me to identify.  Nevertheless, the day's butterfly list totalled 11 species, including a few more Violet Coppers and the even scarcer Woodland Ringlet.  I did remember to look up every now and again, though, as two Red Kites kept making their plaintive whistling call as they circled overhead (this one looks like a juvenile).

I also saw two male Red-backed Shrikes, another species only to be found in the south and east of Belgium, several singing Marsh Warblers, Beautiful Demoiselle and Large Red Damselfly, plus this Spotted Orchid.

Eat your greens!

The reserve of Roodklooster/Rouge-Cloître, my 'local' patch in the south-east of Brussels, has once again turned into one big nursery. 
There were baby tits everywhere when I visited yesterday, including some ever so cute Long-tailed Tits.  A week-old troupe of Egyptian goslings weren't far behind in the cute stakes, and this mother Mute Swan was doing her best to give her six cygnets a healthy diet by pulling up beakfuls of algae and even jumping out of the water to strip leaves off overhanging branches.  This particular pair of swans seem to have six chicks every year and two of them are always pure white instead of the more typical grey.  A pair of Grey Herons, however, have bred for the first time and their conspicuous nest in the crown of a tree on an island now contains two very large, shaggy chicks.  The Coots, on the other hand, seem to be settling in for second broods as I saw several of them sitting on nests.  Hiding away in the grasses from all these hungry beaks to be fed, was this White-legged Damselfly, a very discrete species I rarely get to see, let alone photograph.