A major rarity in Cyprus today, just 200m from my apartment in Mandria. A male Namaqua Dove! It's the size of a sparrow with a long tail like a budgie. The only place it breeds in the western palearctic is southern Israel. I saw a female distantly in Kuwait a couple of years ago, but todays bird was much closer, photographed from the car as it fed on the other side of the road! An amazing bird.
When I got back to Mandria from Paphos there had just been a torrential downpour and the bird had not unreasonably gone missing and there was a tense 30 minutes or so of no show. Eventually though somebody spotted it further down the road. We all got into our cars to use them as hides and the bird just walked down the road towards us, feeding as it came.
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