Continuing our journey in the north - Mia Milia and Kouklia Wetlands

Following our visit to Famagusta south lake we decided to make the most of our excursion into the north and pressed on towards Nicosia and Mia Milia sewage works. Regular readers will know that when on holiday abroad, nothing gets the Davies pulse racing like a visit to the nearest sewage works. In these hot dry countries they're often the only source of water for miles around and of course there's an abundance of food for the birds. In 2018 I spent three weeks in Melbourne Australia, of which two weeks were spent at Werribee sewage works (opens in a new window)! Sewage works are often top birding spots, I read somewhere that Werribee was rated as the second best wetland in the whole of Australia. So I was more than happy to visit Mia Milia today.

Highlight today was a juvenile common crane, a Cyprus first for me, as was an avocet, which obligingly posed in the same photo as the crane. There were good numbers of waders, with 50 spur-winged plover, 10 spotted redshanks, 3 Temminck's stints, little stint, ruff and redshank with 3 green, 8 wood and 3 common sandpipers, plus 110 lapwings.

There were lots of cattle egrets in the area, mainly roosting at the sewage works and feeding in nearby fields.

Common sandpiper, one of three species of sandpiper present.

Glossy ibis.

Wood sandpipers.

A skulky bluethroat.

On the way to Mia Milia we took a detour and went through an area of farmland near the village of Trochni and came across lots of pipits including a few water pipits.

Also red-throated pipit here as well.

Between Famagusta and Nicosia the land is very flat and arable, with the only mountain ranges being the very distant Troodos and the closer but much lower mountains of the Karpas peninsula also known as the pan handle of Cyprus. These fields hold large numbers of larks and of particular interest to me were the Calandra larks that occur here. Very difficult to pin down on the ground yet in flight very distinctive, being obviously larger than the skylarks with black underwings with a white trailing edge. Also a different call. In total we saw about 120 Calandra and close to 1000 skylarks. 

Less obvious were greater short-toed lark. Again impossible to see on the ground, we were pretty sure that we saw a few, grey looking birds in flight, smaller than skylarks, and Peter heard the call a couple of times, but I didn't get a good enough view to be sure.

Kouklia Wetlands is right in the heart of all of this farmland, but sadly both the reservoir and adjacent 'wetlands' were bone dry and have been for years. This photo is the reservoir!

Kouklia Wetlands. We're standing on the reservoir outflow.

Mia Milia.

Mia Milia.

Mia Milia

Mia Milia.