Brent geese and black-necked grebes at Pennington Flash

An amazing morning at Pennington Flash. I was just about to leave the house to head for the flash when I got a message informing me that there were 11 brent geese in the middle. These would be a new species for me at the flash so I was keen to get there as soon as possible. Five minutes later I arrived at Green Lane near the sailing club, when I got another message informing me that there were also 10 black-necked grebes present!

I was getting my gear out of the car and spotted what had to be the brents flying away towards the east. I was gutted that they appeared to be leaving before I had a chance for a decent look but consoled myself that at least I had seen them. However, they circled back round and by the time I got to the viewing area they had landed again. I set up my scope and digiscoping equipment and started to take a video. The brents consisted of 10 pale-bellied birds and one dark-bellied. I still hadn't seen the black-necked grebes at this point because I was focusing solely on the brents, but I needn't have worried because as I was videoing the brents, the grebes swam behind them in a tight knit flotilla! An amazing sight! 

I watched the brents and grebes for about another 30 minutes but I knew that the geese would go soon because as usual on a Saturday morning the open water swimmers were starting to come out with their usual back up boats. For a while the geese dodged the swimmers but eventually at about 08:45 they'd had enough and flew up and high, before heading off east. 

The brents which winter in our area, i.e. Hilbre Island and the North Wales coast are pale-bellied birds with just the occasional dark-bellied and I guess this is where todays birds originate from, since the east coast birds are mainly dark-bellied with the exception of those on Lindisfarne and I'm not sure why those would head our way, especially at this time of year. I was on Hilbre last week when there were still 100+ pale-bellied and a few dark-bellied brents present. Interestingly the pale-bellied birds in our area breed in Greenland and do not generally go to the east coast of England, so it seems a bit of a strange movement for them to appear at Pennington Flash in the middle of April and even stranger for them to head off east.

A spring morning on Hilbre

My intention had been to go to Martin Mere this morning, but news of a male Sardinian warbler caught and ringed on Hilbre Island first thing made me change my plans. It's always a longshot twitching a bird such as this, they often just disappear into dense vegetation following release, never to be seen again. On top of that, I reckon it takes me two hours from leaving home to arriving on the island. This morning was fairly typical, it took me one hour 15 minutes to battle my way through Liverpool in rush hour traffic to get to the car park in West Kirby, then I had to get my gear together, get my wellies on and walk across the sand and occasional rocks for 3.1km (2 miles) in order to get to the area where the bird had been released. By the time I got to the island, I'd already met a couple of other birders walking back who hadn't seen the bird and Birdguides was reporting no further sign since release. Oh well....

It was a truly glorious morning on Hilbre, I didn't see the Sardinian warbler but there were only two of us looking and the bird may well still be around. Hard to be too disappointed on a day like this, and birds I did see included several wheatears, willow warblers, grasshopper warbler, chiffchaffs, 110 pale-bellied brent geese, 4 eiders, a few common scoter, sandwich terns plus the usual waders. I don't go to Hilbre anywhere near enough and days like today make me think that I should!

Photo: Sardinian warbler, Cyprus March 2026.

The crazy thing is of course, when I was in Cyprus two weeks ago, Sardinian warblers were very numerous, in fact they were a bit of a pain when looking for other, rarer silvia warblers such as eastern orphean, eastern subalpine and Cyprus warbler. I've never seen one in the UK though.

A morning on the Ormes

I was up early this morning and on the Great Orme for 6:30 to see the sunrise, then parked up near the limestone pavement and had a walk looking for migrants. 

Brent geese at Red Wharf Bay

An impressive flock of at least 67 pale-bellied brent geese were still at Red Wharf Bay on Anglesey today.

Homeward bound - almost.

Well that's it. The holiday was over and I was heading to the airport to hand back the hire car. I'd had a good day, I started birding at first light, 5.30am and hadn't stopped until now, 2.30pm, a full nine hours birding. The car was due back at 3pm so I reckoned I couldn't squeeze much more out of it. Wrong!

My phone beeped, I instinctively pulled the car over, read the message and turned the car around. I was heading back to Mandria! It was a 10 minute drive back and then I would need another 10 minutes to get to the airport when I left, so with just 30 minutes before the car was due back, that would leave me 10 minutes birding. I had to rely on the bird showing immediately and well, and also pray that it wouldn't be flushed by some over zealous birder or photographer. Or even a child. Oh well, in for penny.....

Swings on a childrens playground on the beachfront at Mandria. Nothing unusual about that you may think. Until you look closer and see that there's a long-eared owl sat in the hedge behind! It's on migration and had just flown in off the sea exhausted and landed in the first potential cover it could find. 

Agia Varvara and Anarita Park

It's only as recently as last December that I first "discovered" Agia Varvara and even then although I was aware that there were three sets of pools, I only went to the middle set. This holiday, spurred on by advice and reports from other birders, I managed to get to the other two sets, the top pools and the motorway pools and they've been a revelation. 

Today the motorway pools had three species of crake, little x 2, spotted and best of all my first Baillon's of the trip. Very similar to little crake, there are subtle differences that enable us to tell the two species apart. Most obvious is the streaking on the flanks of Baillon's, similar to water rail, which little crake lacks. Baillon's also has better marked upperparts with lots of black and white speckling which again little crake lacks. Finally something that I have never been able to see, little crake has a small red mark at the base of the lower mandible. These crakes are smaller than starlings, they're generally pretty shy and even when they do show well they're often moving quickly either feeding or heading for cover which usually consists of a reedbed. Seeing a tiny red dot on the base of the lower mandible is just beyond me. I suppose if you get a decent photo it might be visible, but not with my camera! I'll just rely on seeing the streaky flanks!

Baillon's crake.

Kourion Stadium

I decided to spend most of my last full day in Cyprus at Kourion stadium near Episokpi. It's just a wonderful place, especially at this time of year with many colourful flowers and some great birds hoping around on the ruins, including Cretzschmar's buntings, eastern black-eared wheatear and Cyprus wheatear.

Cretzschmar's buntings are just fabulous birds, the combination of the grey head with a white eye ring and the red /brown of the wings and body just works so well!

This annoyed little guy is a singing male Cyprus wheatear. Some of my best views of this species have been at the stadium.

From the snowy peaks to the desert finch at Geroskipou

Eight days after we left Cyprus last December, a desert finch was found on Paphos headland. I was disappointed to have missed it, especially since it hung around for over a month. However, it was seen regularly and it got to the point where I was beginning to hope that it might stick around long enough for me to see it on this holiday. Sadly though, a week or two before my arrival in the middle of March it went missing and was thought to have gone.   

Obviously I thought that was it, my opportunity to see it had gone. Amazingly though, right out of the blue, it was relocated yesterday at Pioneer beach, Geroskipou. So following my trip to Troodos today, I headed straight there to try to at last catch up with the bird. 

When I arrived it hadn't been seen for about five hours but I joined a group of other birders and very soon after I arrived a flock of greenfinches flew into a bush and we managed to pick out the desert finch, much to my relief. Unfortunately though, they didn't settle and flew off north up the coast.

The other birders drifted off content with having seen the bird, but I wanted a better look, so followed the promenade north for about 400m until I came to a small grassy headland outside the Ivi Mare hotel where I could see that a few woodpigeons were feeding. Sure enough, my hunch paid off and there was the greenfinch flock on the ground and the desert finch was with them. Now I had some great views and I watched it for about 15 minutes before the flock was spooked by a passer-by and they headed off back south.

To the snowy Troodos for a few endemics

No birding holiday to Cyprus is complete without a trip to the Troodos mountains to see a few of the islands endemic subspecies, specifically the coal tit, short-toed treecreeper and jay. Today I managed to see them all pretty easily

Semicollared flycatcher, Asprokremnos Dam

Flycatchers are beginning to arrive now, with collared, semicollared and pied all reported of the past 48 hours. Ironically the two I have seen have both been the rarest which is semicollared

The white on the median wing-coverts which is diagnostic is reduced to a dot on this bird.

Note the white border to the tail feathers which goes all of the way round which is also a feature of semicollared. 

Agia Varvara

I found another three pools at Agia Varvara that I didn't even know existed prior to today. They held a similar array of birds to the other pools including a male little crake, but also a really smart spotted crake which showed briefly at close range. Too brief for a photo, so here are some more little crake photos.