Thunderstorms roll in but the birds keep coming

Some great birds today at Mandria and Paphos headland. It was a beautiful warm and sunny morning but this afternoon after 2pm thunderstorms rolled in one after the other with not much more than 20 minutes break between them and they're still going now at 7pm here. It's dark here now but I just drove to the supermarket and at times the whole sky turned white as lightening struck and then seconds later it felt like the earth was shaking as the thunder came. Torrential rain during the storms, I'm glad I brought my wellies! A breathtaking experience but one afternoon is enough thanks very much. Hopefully the weather will bring yet more birds.

Anyway, best birds today were wryneck, rufous-tailed rock thrush, Caspian stonechat, a decent passage of Baltic gulls, isabelline shrike, black-winged stilt and a night heron. In between the storms a female pallid harrier flew through Mandria.

Wrynecks are fabulous birds and this is the best view I've had for a long time.

This rufous-tailed rock thrush was associating with one of it's cousins, a blue rock thrush.

I managed to find my third Caspian stonechat of the holiday at Paphos Headland following the pair found by Matt Smith at Mandria the other day. There was one on the headland couple of days ago but looking at the photos of that bird it appears to have a slightly different tail pattern and browner upperparts, perhaps making it a young bird. I would say todays bird is an adult, in the field it really stood out as black and white with just a small patch of bright orange on its breast, quite a stunning sight. As I said in a previous post, Caspian stonechat is actually Siberian stonechat of the race hemprichii.

The tail pattern makes it hemprichii. The regular Siberian and our European stonechats have tails that are completely black. Apparently almost all Siberian stonechats that pass through Cyprus are hemprichii.

This is the same isabelline shrike that I saw last December.

Night heron.

Back at Mandria this afternoon the approaching storms brought some dramatic skies and also a passage of gulls, mainly yellow-legged but also about 20 Baltic gulls. These are a race of lesser black-back but are much blacker than the bird we see in the UK, blacker even than Greater black-back, if that's possible!

In the UK we get two races of lesser black-back, graellsii and intermedius. Neither of these races occur in Cyprus, instead here they get fuscus (Baltic gull) and heuglini (Heuglin's / Siberian gull). Both are pretty scarce, especially Heuglin's which is really only a winter visitor to Cyprus in very small numbers.  Baltic gull is more of a passage migrant in Cyprus. Heuglin's is a larger and paler bird than Baltic, more like graellsii whereas Baltic is smaller and slimmer, often appearing longer winged and is the blackest of all gulls, with no contrast between the primaries and the rest of the wing, and virtually no mirrors.

Black-winged stilt on the beach at Mandria.

Run for it!!

Fortunately Paphos Headland is a World Heritage Site because of its impressive archeological ruins and the mosaics are protected by buildings with roofs! Time to take in some culture while the rain passes......