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Silver Lister company at last! My brother-in-law, Michael Sellar (77 yrs), joined me in a week's birdwatching trip to Mallorca 1-8 May. It was my 6th birding trip to the island, having first visited it in 1973.
Although a number of Lincs birders will know Mallorca well, I realise - including from conversations with others - that some who haven't yet become acquainted with the island and its great birdlife, do have it high on their list of places to visit. Observations and notes below are therefore especially intended to interest them.
We flew from Humberside - a new experience for me - and its laid back and frenetic-free atmosphere reminded me very much of the south of England airports in the late 1950's when I first flew to the Mediterranean (France and Italy) on birdwatching/language study trips. The great thing about the western Mediterranean, of course, is its non long-haul proximity. You can fly at 3pm from Humberside and be having dinner in your Mallorcan hotel by 8.30pm (including the plus one hour's time difference) and one is virtually ensconced in another birding world. Moreover, the trip price is very reasonable and represents excellent value for money.
We stayed in C'an Picafort in the NE of the island. The weather was gloriously sunny every day, averaging 25C. We used our hotel as a dormitory/restaurant, hiring a car for the week, leaving every day by 0930 after breakfast and returning about 5.30-6.00pm to freshen up, have a leisurely dinner and go to bed. Minus arrival and departure days, this daily routine gave us 6 full days of some 7-8 hours birding, including - so as to maximise the time available - while eating our packed lunches provided by the hotel. Mind you, ham and cheese droppings on binocular lenses do not improve their usefulness and perhaps it wasn't the boiled egg that smelled off at the strangely scented and euphemistically entitled "Water Treatment Plant" (Depuradora). We concentrated on two main areas - The Bocquer Valley and the Albufera Reserve/Natural Park, areas which are certain to be known to a number of Lincs birders.
Bocquer Valley
This is perhaps the most famous name in Mallorcan birdwatching and is a must to visit. Despite creeping development (and it certainly has changed over the last 35 years), the Bocquer Valley is still a major concentration area for migrants in the right conditions. We found the general area around the Finca to be the most productive although we did spend most of the day walking through the Valley to the sea at Cala Bocquer (and back!).
Highlights included:
Booted Eagle
Red Kite
Peregrine
Woodchat Shrike
Stone Curlew
Blue Rock Thrush
Cirl Bunting
Serin
Sardinian Warbler
Pied Flycatcher
Crag Martin
Inevitably, we had either "just missed" some species -Eleonora's Falcon, Honey Buzzard, Black Kite, etc or subsequently heard that we had "just left" when...........
Albufera Reserve/Natural Park
We specifically chose our Hotel for its being only a 10 minutes drive away from this fantastic bird bonanza, which is recognised as the best year-round birding site in the Balearic Islands and is among the top wetland areas in the Western Mediterranean. The southern part of the Reserve also includes a dry scrub area with dunes, which suits such species as Short-toed Lark, Tawny Pipit, Bee Eater, Finches, etc.
Highlights included:
(D= 5-10 seen daily)
Cattle Egret - 50+ daily
Black-winged Stilt - 30+ daily
Red crested Pochard - 15+ daily
Cetti's Warbler - 15+ daily
Night Heron - D certainly no need for dawn or dusk visits as birds were perched in the open or flying around.
Purple Heron - D
Purple Gallinule - D
Crested Coot - D
Kentish Plover - D
Little ringed Plover - D
Hoopoe - D
Bee Eater - D
Nightingale - D
Short-toed Lark - D
Fan-tailed warbler - D
(Zitting cisticola)
Plus
Black Kite
Eleonora's Falcon
Red-footed Falcon
Woodchat Shrike
Great White Egret
Audouin's Gull
Black Tern
Whiskered Tern
Gull Billed Tern
Stone Curlew
Temminck's Stint
Little Stint
Pallid Swift
Tawny Pipit
NB
Little Bittern was obviously a dawn/dusk bird during our week as we heard of only a few daytime sightings, The strange thing is that when I lived in Andalusia (1999-2002), they were up and down the local reedbeds on and off throughout the day.
Moustached Warbler - we heard of only a few reported sightings throughout the week. Very few birds were singing, but we were informed that by the middle/end of May there should be hundreds in song with some showing well. Squacco Heron/Spoonbill - again, we heard of only a few reports.
Other birds we had hoped for but didn't connect with (and these birds seemed to be in short supply or non-arrivals during the first week of May) included: Golden Oriole, Red-Rumped Swallow, Osprey, Marbled Duck, Collared Pratincole.
Again, there would have been much more chance of connecting with them later in May.
Our list tally for the week was in excess of 80 species and, for those Lincs birders who haven't yet visited Mallorca, about 50% of that total are 'unrecorded' or 'rarities' for Lincolnshire.
We recorded about a dozen butterflies during our trip, the highlights being Swallowtail, Cleopatra, Clouded Yellow, Bath White and the southern European form of the Speckled Wood in which the upperwings are strongly patterned in orange instead of creamy white. On our daily trips, the majority of the birders we met were from the UK but we also met some from Norway, Sweden, Holland, Germany and mainland Spain. Without exception, we found that the other birders were friendly, co-operative and only to keen to exchange sightings information or to point out 'good' birds near-by. There are about a dozen Hides, Observation Decks and Viewing Towers around the Albufera and there was always room to sit or view when we arrived. We reckoned on CIM Hide near the Visitor Centre to be the best location.
Economic Footnote
My brother-in-law stayed at a standard Lincoln 'Travel Lodge- the night before we left for Mallorca. We calculated that if he had stayed for the week in that accommodation at their prices on a half board plus light lunch basis, his final bill in Lincoln would have been more than on his week's birding trip to Mallorca which INCLUDED punctual early/mid afternoon return flights Humberside - Palma, return coach transfer Palma - C'an Picafort hotel, half board plus generous picnic lunch, all drinks, en-suite/balcony/single supplement in and extremely well-appointed hotel with very professional uniformed staff and sumptuous menu choice, glorious Mallorcan weather and birdlife, etc. etc. As Richard Littlejohn might add, "You couldn't make it up".
Regards
Freddy
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