Friday 15 August 2014

Summer at home

I have been at my home north of Varna, Bulgaria on several occasions during the last month. While there, I haven't had much time for birding. However I have seen some good birds even from my own garden and have managed some light birding on a couple of walks to the neighbouring village.

One of the highlights, was from my door step when I saw 200 white stork fly over four days ago. This was one of several waves of white stork  last week seemingly heading south already.

some of 200 white stork over my house

The next evening, I was looking out at dusk from the front when I noticed a little owl on  a neighbour's house. I used to see them there in previous summers but last year I couldn't find them. It's good to know they have been seen again.

little owl from my house

The walks to the neighbouring village were quite interesting too. There are several fields of sun flower. If I look hard, I often find well camouflaged male black-headed bunting on the flower heads.

female black headed bunting

This time, I managed a duller female black headed bunting.

corn bunting

Corn bunting is more common and much more easily seen. Other very common local birds include skylark in the fields and golden oriole along the avenue of trees following the road.

European turtle dove

Around my village is a stronghold of the diminishing European turtle dove. In summer they are readily spotted on wires near-by but they are extremely skittish.

lesser grey shrike

Lesser grey shrike is the less common of two shrikes in the area. Red-backed shrike is around in greater numbers. 

young red backed shrike

These include both juvenile and adult birds.

male red backed shrike

Seen on my walks, spotted flycatcher was no surprise although they prefer more shaded areas than most of the route.

spotted flycatcher

Blackbird may be abundant in the area but it is quite difficult to see. It is shy around people here. 

young blackbird

House martin is extremely abundant especially near my house. The wires heave with them at dawn and dusk. Barn swallow are numerous too and, unlike house martin, frequently land on the avenues of trees between the villages. Here, at the moment, you can see young swallows on these trees still being fed by their parents.

young barn swallow waiting to be fed

I have observed only two birds of prey in the area over the month. One was a short toed eagle, seen last month, which is is a known summer breeder in the area. The other was more recent. It was a hobby seemingly flying with some of the barn swallow high in the sky.

hare

There is much more other wildlife too including hare.

Monday 11 August 2014

Rimini, Italy

Rimini has plenty of parkland used extensively by locals and tourists. I undertook some leisurely birding among them on the morning of August 5th.

My first objective was to get good views of  male Italian sparrow. It looks like a house sparrow body with a Spanish sparrow head. In habits it appeared to me more like a Spanish sparrow. For example, it seems rarely to visit houses. 

male Italian sparrow

While tracking Italian sparrow, I inadvertently came across tree sparrow in some trees.

Tree sparrow

There are two birds which are often out in the open within wooded areas alomst any where in southern Europe in summer. These are spotted flycatcher and red-backed shrike.


spotted flycatcher

Spotted flycatcher was particulrly common within the town.

red-backed shrike

As in San Marino, blackbird was extremly common and tame.


young blackbird

There were so many young birds, it was good to see an adult male every now and again.

male adult blackbird

Both goldfinch and greenfinch were in the parkland areas.


young greenfinch

Only one warbler was seen and that was a male blackcap.

adult yellow-legged gull

It would be easy to build a very large birding list at Rimini if you had the time. As well as parkland and gardens there is the coast. I didn't visit the coastline but even in the marina, there were two types of gull readily observed.

first year yellow-legged gull

Yellow legged gull and black-headed gull were present in about equal numbers.

black-headed gull

This was the first time I had ever done any birding in Italy however light.



Species seen during walks around Rimini on August 5th.

Sunday 10 August 2014

San Marino

Bird watching is not my only hobby. I have two other serious ones. One of which is travel. I aim to visit every country in the world. San Marino was my latest and happened last week.

I based myself in Rimini, Italy and visited San Marino from there although it was only for one day.

While in San Marino I indulged in some birding, of course. This was necessarily near the top of the city (altitude 750 metres) where the tourists (like me on this occasion) get dropped off.


As in Italy, the house sparrow is missing. Italian sparrow is not really a house bird and was rare up at San Marino city. However  black redstart occupies the housing niche instead at least in summer. I saw many on roof tops and around houses as well as in trees.

I can't believe I am the first person to record this bird on the e-bird database and yet two others have recorded common redstart which I didn't see. 

black redstart

It was hard work finding a variety of species though I was helped by a mobile and niosy group of hooded crow making a brief appearance in a car park as we arrived.

view from the top

Apart from black redstart, the next most easily seen and common bird was blackbird. There were tame family groups everywhere.

juvenile blackbird

This tamest reminds me how they behave when I have birded in the UK and in New Zealand and is in stark contrast to Bulgaria, Azerbaijan and Kurdistan where they are really skitish.

serin

Other birds were hard work. I got glimpses of Euoprean blue tit and of European serin before one or two of the latter kept still for a while.

very yellow serin

The male serin were very variable looking. The one above was at the colouful end of the spectrum. Taking this with it's pink bill and washed out mantle and wings made me contemplate whether it has some canary genes.

common buzzard

As well as looking down to see the views in San Marino, its worth looking upwards too. In the air I spotted a common buzzard. Furthermore common house martin were around all day.


European jay

I ventured down away from the old town for a while in search of different habitat and birds. I was only rewarded with a single jay in the distance. To build a better picture of San Marino's birds, spending more time down in the plains would be rewarding but I was only on  a tourist bus out of Rimini.

The next day, I did a spot of birding there too. I will blog about that next.

Species seen in San Marino and recorded on e-bird 

Saturday 9 August 2014

Gouizha

Ealry morning on July 29th before I left Kurdistan, I ventured up the heights near Gouizha, Sulaimani. 

The altitude was only about 1150 metres but the habitat was sufficiently different from Sulaimani itself to see some difference in the species. 


Rufous bush robin

One species that I had seen down in the town was rufous bush robin. However their density up at Gouizha was higher and they were more approachable.

another pose of rufous bush robin

This was the only place I saw Upcher's warbler on the trip and it appeared quite common.

Upcher's warbler

It was also the only place I saw a shrike. In this case it was a young woodchat shrike


Juvenile woodchat shrike

I found the separation between it and masked shrike quite difficult. The rusty nape on the second picture was a big clue. It also has a white rump and large bill fitting woodchat shrike better. My thanks to contributors to birdforum identification forum for drawing my attention to these last two features.

second view of woodchat shrike

My identification issues didn't finish with the woodchat shrike. A wheatear was very common in the area but I struggled to decide whether they were black-eared wheatear, pied wheatear or their hybrids. The default species in Kurdistan in summer is (eastern) black-eared wheatear.

eastern black-eared wheatear - first view

Once again I turned to birdforum for help. Omar from Baghdad pointed out that the face and neck colours fit black-eared wheatear. The nape is partially obscured but the chin colouration is clearer and it is not dark as would be expected with pied wheatear.

eastern black-eared wheatear -second view


There is a useful picture I often refer to (see below) when making comparisons with male Cyprus, black-eared (both dark throated and pale throated) and pied wheatears. This comes from a paper on the cyprus wheatear by Christoph Randler, Marc I. Forschler, Javier Gonzalez, Mansour Aliabadian, Franz Bairlein and Michael Wink. The degree of dark colouration on the nape and chin for each species is shown.





Male dark-throated eastern black-eared wheatear were not the only type of eastern black-eared wheatear seen. 


pale-throated black-eared wheatear 

There was a male pale throated variant near-by.

female type black-eared wheatear

Yet more eastern black eared wheatear were about including female types and young birds.

young black-eared wheatear

I regretted the fact that I had to catch a plane to leave Kurdistan soon after lunch time because I would have liked to have explored this area more fully. I had birded only along the trail at the bottom of the tree line. The woods above looked very interesting as did the higher slopes.


looking up the heights at Gouizha

I did manage to see two wood pigeon as an appetiser as to what may have been there. 

In the end I was satisified with seeing 44 species on the trip in a region with great potential but with some current difficulties being so close to a war zone. 


Summary of all 44 species seen in Kurdistan including the ones at Gouizha


Azadi Park, Sulaimani
Tanjaro river, Sulaimani
Dukan
Tanjaro river (2), Sulaimani
Gouizha
See-see partridge



x

White stork

x

x

Short-toed eagle


x


Moorhen



x

Black-winged stilt



x

Red-wattled lapwing

x

x

Little ringed plover



x

Green sandpiper

x

x

Common sandpiper

x

x

Wood sandpiper



x

Armenian gull


x


Feral pigeon
x
x
x
x

Woodpigeon




x
Collared dove
x
x
x
x

Laughing dove
x
x
x
x
x
Hoopoe
x




White throated kingfisher


x


Pied kingfisher


x


Blue-cheeked bee-eater


x


European bee-eater


x


Woodchat   shrike




x
Golden oriole


x


Magpie

x
x
x
x
Jackdaw


x


Northern raven

x
x


White eared bulbul


x


Great tit


x


Crested lark

x
x
x
x
Red rumped swallow


x


Barn swallow
x

x
x

Graceful prinia


x


European reed warbler


x


Eastern olivaceous warbler
x


x

Menetries’s warbler
x




Upcher’s warbler




x
Blackbird


x


Rufous bush robin



x
x
Isabelline wheatear




x
Black eared wheatear




x
House sparrow
x
x
x
x
x
Yellow  wagtail



x

White wagtail
x


x

Greenfinch
x




Goldfinch


x