Bedraggled and perplexing wagtails, larks and wheatears at Mandria

Nowt's easy as they say. At first glance it would appear that the bird in the photo above is clearly a Finsch's wheatear. That's how I called it in the field. Except that I don't think that it is a Finsch's wheatear. Look at the tail, it's not a clear cut inverted T, it has black sides making it more like a W. I think this makes it an eastern black-eared wheatear. Except that the black of the throat appears to meet the wing which would rule out that species. Unfortunately though, I don't have any photos that conclusively show this. Of course eastern black-eared should be yellowish orange and black, this bird appears to be mainly white and black. So who knows? I'm calling it eastern black-eared for now. It was that kind of day.

The reason that the bird looks so bedraggled is that the weather was awful today, dull, with long periods of torrential rain between 9am and 2pm, accompanied by gale force winds all day. A bedraggled and windswept bird is never the easiest to identify, it makes plumage look darker and identification features are hidden. Also photographs are all but impossible.

This photo appears to show the black on the throat meeting the black on the wing, a key feature of Finsch's, but it also shows the black sides to the tail.

Surely a female northern wheatear? Nope, it's a drenched Isabelline. 

Can't really make out much on this, but surely this must be a female northern wheatear because it's clearly not a Isabelline with such dark wings. Nope, the all dark tail seen in flight revealed it as a female desert wheatear!

...... and what about this? The commonest races of yellow wagtail here are feldegg, black-headed, and flava, blue-headed. This is neither of them, but what is it? I think that the black mask, white supercillium and dark grey head make this  "dombrowskii", a hybrid feldegg x flava or perhaps feldegg x beema. Smart looking bird.

This I think is "superciliaris", another hybrid   feldegg x flava. 

Basically, "superciliaris" looks like a feldegg with a white supercillium, whereas "dombrowskii" looks like a flava with a head that is a bit too dark for that race. "superciliaris" apparently originates from south east Russia, "dombrowskii" from Romania. Again, please excuse the poor quality photos, the weather was awful. Hopefully I'll get some better photos in the next few days.

There where white wagtails everywhere today.

Meanwhile, a small flock of eight larks landed on the track in front of me. These were the most bedraggled of the lot, but I'm pretty confident that they were short-toed larks.

Here's something that's a bit easier, yet still bedraggled. A hoopoe, one of several I saw today.

Plenty of visible migration despite the weather, here are migrating pintail and garganey, heading north along the coast at Mandria. 

Baltic gull is a race of lesser black-back which is a long distance migrant and passes through Cyprus at this time of year. Baltic gull is much blacker than the race we see in the UK and is as black as a great black-back.

Amazingly long wings make this a female, I think.

Glossy ibis were on the move today, I saw three or four flocks of this kind of size flying over.

I also saw several flocks of grey herons go over, all coming in from the sea and heading inland. Later I saw a flock of at least 13 grey herons huddled together sheltering from the wind at Asprokremmos dam, perhaps new arrivals? Perhaps these very birds?

However the true star of the show today was this skulking Ruppell's warbler at Timi beach, my first for 41 years, since 1985, when I saw a pair at Delphi in Greece.

This white stork was in a field at Timi beach. So all in all a decent yet challenging day for birds. Plenty to wet the lips for the coming days. I'm just glad that I brought my wellies and waterproofs.

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