Dermot Breen's Blog: coal tit

Thursday, 24 January 2019

Cyprus 31st August 2018

I had another look at Limassol Salt Lake this morning but no sign of any cranes again. I checked an area of shrub around Kourion about 15km west of Limassol and had a nice selection of passerines in the area including my first Cyprus Wheatears. I had one probable fly-over Cretzschmar's Bunitng the previous day and another around the Kourion in the morning but I eventually had cracking views of an adult male feeding by the roadside further inland near Kouris Reservoir.
For the remainder of the day I headed inland and up to the Troodos Mountains. I caught up with all of the endemic subspecies up there excluding of course the Scops Owl which is very hard to pick up if they aren't calling like they do in Spring. At my first stop I could hear a pair of Jays kicking up a right racket and was amazed to see that they were mobbing a perched Goshawk. I haven't seen many perched Goshawks before.

Cyprus Warbler

Cyprus Wheatear

Lesser Grey Shrike and Woodchat Shrike.

Woodchat Shrike

Lesser Grey Shrike

Cyprus Jay Garrulus glandarius glaszneri

Adult Northern Goshawk

Cyprus Coal Tit Parus ater cypriotes

Cyprus Short-toed Treecreeper Certhia brachydactyla dorotheae

Eurasian Wren

Saturday, 22 September 2018

Taiwan 26th March 2018

On our last full day in country we birded back up in the hills in the general area of the Huisun Forest Area and the Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area. This was the highest we reached during our Taiwan trip at around the 3,000 metres mark. It was unsurprisingly rather chilly up there and there was some snow on the ground on the surrounding peaks. It was here that we found a few of the species that are only really found at the highest elevations in Taiwan such as the Eurasian Wren and Alpine Accentor.
Lifers for the day included Brown Dipper, Asian House Martin, Taiwan Wren-Babbler, White-browed Shortwing, Siberian Rubythroat and Eastern Buzzard. The Wren-Babbler and the Shortwing were both excellent species to get as they take a significant amount of time to see properly. We had encountered both species on call previously on the trip and a few had been lucky to get short views of each. I had given up hope on seeing either and it was equally satisfying to get the Wren-Babbler as this was the last of our targeted endemics for the trip. The Shortwing like many of the other distinctive Taiwan subspecies are a possible likely split in the future. The Rubythroat was incredibly brief and I was about the only one to get onto it other than our guide. We had heard several during the trip but none showed.