Madeira Day 3

This was the day that I had allocated to visit the Biological Gardens and the Monte Palace Tropical Garden at Monte north of Funchal Centre. In the event, transport complications and lack of time meant I only went to the latter, which a German guy on yesterday's Butterfly Tour suggested would be better for butterflies.

Having failed to find the relevant bus stop and missed the hourly bus connection to the Tropical Garden I decided to take the cable car.  It cost more time and money but I thought well worth it as it offered good views over the whole area.  The cable car passes quite close over the houses whose owners can do nothing about it if a certain overhead distance is observed. Perhaps in protest, one man immediately below was tending his garden completely naked, provoking an ecstatic reaction from an Asian lady in the same car as me.

Arriving at the garden, I headed straight at the Lauressilva trees optimistically hoping for another Cleopatra but the downward path of broken grey stone was quite tricky and so spent most of the time looking at my own feet.

I wasn't overall quite sure what to make of the Tropical Garden.  It's certainly informative and well-resourced with plenty of trees and flowers but I felt overall a bit unnatural and disappointing.  It certainly didn't produce any interesting butterflies as speckled woods were all I saw.

One thing I started to notice on them though is the variation of the depth of background colour of the forewing.  In this example, it is particularly dark:

Speckled Wood

I guess the lighter versions have been on the wing longer.

As throughout the rest of my stay in Madeira, the only bees seen were buff-tailed bumblebees and honey bees.  Perhaps more appropriate to the tropical theme was this oriental darter, doing its best  to imitate a twig.

Island Darter

Otherwise it all had a bit of a zoo-like feel.  There was a few ponds in the oriental garden, one with masses of koi carp and another with masses of croaking frogs.

Koi Carp

Croaking Frogs

A big hit with the visitors was this small pond full of flamingos, amusingly tossing their heads almost in synchrony as they expressed apparent verbal displeasure.

Flamingos

Presumably they've had their wings clipped to prevent them from flying away.

More interesting was another small pond containing a couple of ducks I couldn't recognise. These are wood ducks, a rare American migrant to Madeira and perhaps therefore also not entirely there by choice.

Male Wood Duck

Just before leaving I was reminded of reading that robins abroad are much shier than in the UK when this wee one turned up so close I could almost have caught it.

Robin

While waiting 30 minutes for the service bus back to Funchal, I did see a white butterfly at distance.  As the Madeiran Large White is extinct and the African migrant is a rarity, I'm 98% certain it must have been a small white.

As if by habit I made again for the Municipal Garden.  Once again the Monarch was in evidence except at this time there were at least four of them.  From time to time they performed the speckled wood habit of spiralling aggressively upwards, this time flying around to the background noise of a prolonged religious ceremony.

Monarchs

And just to prove they're not always completely elusive, I snapped a buff-tailed bumblebee on a nice flower

Buff-tailed Bumblebee

Spain - Day 3

We set off in the wee small hours again the next day, this time in search of the secretive Dupont's lark.  Its shyness meant us standing in line motionless on the site off the road to La Yunta in near freezing temperatures. Well we heard it clearly enough but it seemed to have disappeared by the time there was reasonable light and we only saw one or two bits and bobs on the way back for breakfast. 

Setting off again in the van we stopped briefly for some common cranes that were posing nicely in a field, not daring to get out in case we disturbed them.

Cranes posing

This was on the way for a walk in the hills near Tornos looking for larks, which were well-camouflaged and the one I definitely saw was Thekla's Lark.  Unfortunately my photography skills were again much challenged as many sightings were at considerable distance and several photos came out blurry.  Hopefully I can find an app to rescue some of them

Later we headed to the other side of the laguna, where there were some flamingos at reasonably close range, mainly keeping their heads down.  I think this is the best view I've had of flamingos to date.

Flamingos

There were a good deal of both marsh and hen harriers around and another walk near Las Cuerlas, after a period of seeing bits and pieces at distance, we hit on an area where a large number of raptors were flying overhead, almost as if participating in an air display.  In addition to those already encountered, they included a totally new sighting, the black-shouldered kite (never heard of!) and, almost as an afterthought, a couple of golden eagles...

Of all of them I got nothing but blurry silhouettes so it was a bit of a surprise, on returning to the lagoon near Dirigida, that I managed to get a passable shot of a mass of cranes right on the far side of the lake, many hundreds of yards away.  I must have got the zoom spot on for once.

Cranes at distance

When we first got there, there was also a nice white wagtail close by but the main birds in evidence where great and cattle egret, the latter showing no yellow as still in winter plumage.  I learned you can still tell them apart by the fact that the great egret has a much longer neck.

Great Egret

Cattle Egret

White Wagtail

Great egrets are starting to be seen in the North of England but cattle egrets are still a rarity, though I saw lots of them in the West Indies.  The white wagtail is also infrequent.

However the strangest thing we saw on stopping further down was three roe deer that had apparently decided to swim the whole length of the lagoon in very cold water.  We saw the last part of their journey, lasting several minutes with one pulling ahead to leave the other two straggling behind.

Roe Deer

Also sighted in this area and on the way back to the hotel were: little bustard, stonechat, linnet (lots of), black redstart and spanish sparrow.

In the evening I had a bit of reflection on the photography angle and decided to increase the focal length of the birdwatching auto facility on the camera.

Of course serious birdwatching photographers will tell you you really need to use manual settings...

Spain - Day 2

Oh dear, what a catastrophe!

At teatime on day 2 perhaps still jetlagged after getting up at 3.15 am on Monday to make the flight from Stansted, I managed to permanently delete all the photos I had taken during the day including good views of some notable first time sightings.  So all I can do is tell the story of what I saw without the evidence.

The day started well before dawn when we drove a few miles to an observation post at the Southern corner of the lake.  It was still pitch dark but after half an hour, vague shapes could be made out and I used the moon setting on my camera to see lines and lines of cranes in the distance...

The story with the cranes is that they gather on the Laguna di Gallocanta before migrating northwards across the Pyrenees. Each day at this time of year some will make the flight, some will remain and others will move in.  

So as the light improved, they started to move off in increasing numbers, flying straight over our heads in an overwhelming display except for one lone individual that came back.  Someone joked that it must have forgotten something.

We were told that there were around 15,000 cranes in the area on the day but the hotel organised a competition for us to guess how many there would be on the last day of our stay, just before the start of the "crane weekend" when most are expected to make the move north.  The number counted on that Friday was over 27,500, many more than any of us guessed!

Also seen on or the lake were some distant flamingos, shelduck, shoveler and teal as well as calandra lark, merlin and marsh harrier nearby.

Later in the day we travelled around a bit seeing crested lark, several linnets rock sparrow and roe dear. indeed it was going along in the van that led to a spectacular sighting when one of the guides saw two great bustard crossing behind us in his mirror as he drove along!  They disappeared straight away but we caught up with them again by circling around and managed good views. 

Something similar happened not much later when a bird of prey flew out of a tree in front of the advancing van.  Some thought buzzard and some thought marsh harrier but it flew off speedily to a corner of a distant field, where it could eventually be identified as a booted eagle

You can see why I was fed up about deleting the images.

I did manage one photographic capture that evening. In a garden near the hotel there was a bush full of twittering birds, which could only be seen fleetingly as they left and entered the foliage so I tried without much success to video them:

Tree with invisible birds

The Merlin app suggested spanish sparrows but I think not. Bog standard house sparrow is I think the correct answer.  I later learned that spanish sparrow is a more rural species.

23rd June

I cycled a large figure of eight through the Camargue between Villeneuve and Mas St Bertrand and in

Flamingo (and tree!)

contrast to yesterday, there was wildlife at almost every turn.

Apart from species I had already encountered - the egrets, kites, marsh harriers, marbled white butterflies and a hordes of warblers that disappeared every time I tried to identify them, there were various fresh sightings, including the inevitable flamingos* (though not so many this early in the year), skylarks and crested grebes,several black-winged stilt*, a red-footed falcon* plus a light-coloured falcon I couldn't put a name to, a suspected pallid swift* and a large green lizard with a yellow belly that slid across the road just in front of the bike. I also heard a cuckoo.

However I must say that there was one other wildlife encounter that I will remember - the bull steak I ate at L'Ingenu at Mas St Bertrand, which was excellent!

* These were all first sightings.

15th June

Minsmere on short break in East Anglia. An incredible visit, in that I sighted virtually every bird I wanted to see in the minimum amount of time.  Bearded tit, the main target appeared within 40 minutes of arriving, along with reed warbler.

I pretty much expected to see an avocet from the East hide but to see one ten yards out immediately on entering staggered me a bit.  Soon I added spoonbill and flamingo along with various others (that actually interested me less!) thanks to the guidance of one of the RSPB staff. These were: black tailed godwit, gadwall and spotted redshank.

I not only heard but saw cetti's warbler on the way to the bittern hide, where marsh harriers were in action. The occasional bittern was on the move and visible in flight. And then a squadron of hobbies moved in with a spectacular display to feed on the pond dragonflies.

I didn't see the little egret but on moving to the last reed hide, clearly heard a water rail.

Not much was happening in the woodland so I decided to return to the north wall to see if I could improve on the bearded tit sighting, and sure enough a male appeared briefly on the very edge of the reeds.

Many of these spots were aided by wardens and experienced watchers nearby, but eleven first sightings on the same outing has to be a bit special.