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 passerby 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.

Masked shrike, Akrotiri

I'd all but given up with masked shrike, there's been a few around but I just couldn't seem to connect with them. Today I was looking at orchids near Agios Georgios chapel at Akrotiri, when a fabulous male suddenly popped up on a branch nearby. A really gorgeous bird.

Semicollared flycatcher at Bishops Pool

At Bishops Pool today there was a wonderful semicollared flycatcher which was a new bird for me. Also here, lots of eastern Bonelli's warblers.

A trip to Larnaca and an unexpected phalarope

Since the weekend Mandria and the Paphos birding sites have faced an invasion of British birders, and this had coincided with better weather which has slowed down migration compared to last week. In a bid to escape the crowds and freshen up my birding I decided to have a trip to Larnaca today. 

The one thing that the Paphos area is missing is good wader and duck habitat so Spiros Pool and Larnaca waste water reservoirs were an ideal antidote. They're 130km from Mandria and a 90 minute drive, but the roads are really good, dual carriageway almost all of the way, so it's not really a problem and with an early start there's hardly any traffic enabling me to arrive at Spiros Pool at 7.15am.

I didn't really go for anything in specific but there has been a red-necked phalarope on the pool for a couple of days and it was nice to see that. 

Photo: Marsh sandpiper.

Also here, several marsh sandpipers, black-winged stilts and Kentish plovers, plus a decent array of other waders including little stint, ruff and black-tailed godwit.

Little crakes (and water frogs!) at Agia Varvara

I called in again at Agia Varvara this afternoon and at least one little crake showed well again, so well in fact that I was able to take this video. I recommend turning your sound up, because the real stars of this production are the Cyprus water frogs! It almost sounds like they're talking.

Noisy blighters! A Cyprus water frog.