Corsica 2nd - 9th July

Pam and I travelled to Corsica on the Moby car ferry departing Livorno at 08:00 and arriving in Bastia at around 12:30 on 2nd July. The ferry crossing was fairly quiet with just half a dozen sightings each of Scopoli's and Yelkouan Shearwaters. We immediately headed for Corte in the mountains where we stayed for 3 nights.

The following morning I headed south stopping for an hour at the Fortin de Pasciola accessed from just beyond Vivario which quickly provided the calls of both Moltoni's and Marmora's Warblers but rather poor views of each. I carried in the direction of the Col de Sorba stopping about 3km from the T20/D69 junction. 

Corsican Pines

It was very quiet by the roadside but a short walk south on a rough track and I soon heard the distinctive almost Jay like call of the Corsican Nuthatch (42 .1497222 17.30556). The call is difficult to describe, so here is a recording made at the time (this doesn't always play with Safari as the browser but works fine with Google Chrome).

I was surprised at how small they were, smaller than Kruper's Nuthatch and looking particularly small in flight. Getting photographs proved tricky as they stayed close to the top of the pines and were hidden much of the time. Watching a male for a prolonged period he spent much of the time hunting on the underside of the branches and I was surprised when it stopped and spent several minutes preening whilst hanging upside down, bat like!

Corsican Nuthatch - male

Whilst watching the nuthatches several Crossbill flew over as did several parties of Corsican Finch and I decided to try for photos of these and return to the nuthatches later. 

Corsican Finch - male

They are much yellower on the underparts and browner on the back than their mainland counterpart the Citril Finch. The mantle of some males is the colour of a Linnet. 
The following morning I returned to the nuthatches and quickly found them again in the same area. There were at least 5 but could have been more. Other birds in the area included Jay, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Cirl Bunting and Blue, Coal and Great Tits plus several Mediterranean Flycatchers.

Corsican Nuthatch - female

I then followed the track further up the hillside, which after another 400m revealed a scrubby area off to the right which looked ideal for Marmora's Warbler, and so it was. I spent several hours in the area and had at least 7 birds with several males in song. They spent most of the time deep in the scrub and were often invisible, even when only a few metres away but eventually I managed some rather distant photos of a male bird which stood briefly on a rock. Although I have seen Balearic Warbler several times on Majorca these were my first Marmora's Warblers since I saw Britains first record on Midhope Moor in 1982. It would be something to find one on my local Beeley Moor.

Marmora's Warbler - male

Leaving the mountains we headed to the coast at Calvi. It was very warm, with day time temperatures in the low 30's, so between around 10:00 and 17:00 it was difficult bird watching and generally unproductive. On the way we stopped at a beach just to the north of Calvi where a pair of Red-rumped Swallow were nesting in a beach cafe.

A Jay at the campsite came to visit the bins and proved more co-operative than many of that species, it is a separate race on Corsica but like many of the races looked very similar to the birds in the UK.

European Jay 

In a 500m stretch of pines by the coast I found at least 3 pairs of Mediterranean Flycatcher, another recent split and Corsica/Sardinia speciality. I spent several hours watching and photographing them and will do a separate blog post on these observations.

Mediterranean Flycatcher

A bushy area at the edge of town held at least one pair of Sardinian and Moltoni's Warblers with the latter still singing.

Moltoni's Warbler - male

Moltoni's Warbler - female

Sardinian Warbler - female

Further up the coast we stopped at Saint-Florent, on the way a female Red-backed Shrike with at least one juvenile was seen on roadside wires.

Saint-Florent

The campsite had both Nightjar and Scops Owl calling but I didn't see either. A late afternoon walk in to the hills to the west of town produced almost nothing but the same walk in the early hours of the following morning yielded Nightingale, Moltoni's and Dartford Warbler plus Cirl Bunting, Common Buzzard, Woodlark and Blue Rock Thrush.

Cirl Bunting - adult female

The other feature of Corsica, unlike the rest of France is that all the sparrows are Italian and the starlings Spotless.

Italian Sparrow - Male upper, Juvenile lower

The commonest dragonfly was Southern Migrant Hawker which were anywhere with a bit of standing water.

Southern Migrant Hawker

All in all a very successful and enjoyable trip, a bit cooler and fewer flies and mosquitoes would have been perfect.
We left Corsica again on the Bastia - Livorno ferry and again saw a small number of shearwaters.

Scopoli's Shearwater

The ferry was so well camouflaged I'm surprised we didn't see more from it!

Moby Ferry

Brittany coast - 24th -28th August

This was my first trip to Brittany so wasn't quite sure what to expect but the coast is very scenic and very reminiscent of Cornwall to where the area has a strong affinity.
One bird I was keen to photograph was Red-billed Chough. Photographs of all dark birds are quite a challenge and need decent light and some colour in the background. The setting at Pointe de Pen-Hir was superb with a carpet of flowers atop rocky cliffs.

Red-billed Chough

There were not many other birds on the headland but Gannets were passing off-shore and I disturbed several Grayling from amongst the flowers.

Grayling

Moving down the coast I visited the small pools of Le Petit Loch, just south of Guidel Plage. There were a few waders round the edge including Greenshank, Curlew, and Common and Green Sandpiper. I searched for Bluethroat without success but did manage a single Wryneck with a few Cetti's and Fan-tailed Warblers and family parties of Stonechat.

Wryneck

The next stop was on the Quiberon peninsula were we stayed for a few days. On the drive to the end we made several stops and came across a nice area with gulls and terns as well as Rock Pipits, they were all of the race petrosus as we have in the UK.

Rock Pipit

Amongst the mainly Black-headed Gulls were several Mediterranean including some reasonably fresh juveniles which I don't see very often.

Mediterranean Gull - adult

Mediterranean Gull - juvenile moulting to 1st winter

We stayed close to the tip of the peninsula near the town of Quiberon. The rocky headland had plenty of shorebirds with hundreds of Sanderling and Turnstone with a few Whimbrel and Dunlin. Some of the Turnstone were still in reasonable breeding plumage.

Turnstone

I had male Cirl Bunting singing at the campsite and several more in the last bushes on the point. Most were adult males but I did manage to find a couple of juveniles.

Cirl Bunting - male

Cirl Bunting -juvenile

The only other bird of note was the large numbers of Wood Pigeon flying down the peninsula, several thousand in number. I can only assume they stop at the end and eventually return.

Southern Bulgaria

Leaving Slovenia I was slightly apprehensive about crossing Serbia, not sure why, but I decided to cross the country in one go then into Bulgaria.
In the end my worries were unfounded, crossing the border from Croatia the roads after the border were rather bumpy and I thought this was a sign of things to come but the roads improved and the scenery for the first couple of hundred miles was much like Croatia with flat farmland as far as the eye could see. After Nis the scenery started to change and the countryside was much more undulating with green hillsides, colourful villages and a deep, long gorge as the Bulgarian border approached. It would be an interesting area to explore at another time.
I stayed overnight just outside Sofia, just by the crossroads where the road to Kulata and the Greek border starts. I followed the dual carriageway until it ended just short of the Kresna Gorge although it looks like the road will bypass the gorge in the future but for now it's shared with hundreds off lorries travelling in both directions. As I left Sofia I was concerned that I might not be able to find fuel but I have never seen so many petrol stations, they seemed to be every few kilometres presumably feeding the constant flow of lorries.

Kresna Gorge

The gorge is beautiful and I was soon seeing large numbers of butterflies, Scarce Swallowtail was one of the most conspicuous but there were blues, coppers and whites, which will have to be identified later.

Scarce Swallowtail

Nightingales were singing everywhere but were never easy to see, singing from the densest cover. 

Nightingale

Cirl Buntings sang from the tree tops and in the highest part of the gorge, Griffon Vultures sailed overhead.

Cirl Bunting

Before the motorway started again on the final 10 Kilometres or so before the Kulata crossing I turned left and explored the hillside up to Melnick and then on to Rohzen where I stayed a couple of nights.

Red-Rumped Swallow

I found Eastern Orphean Warblers, Golden Orioles, plenty of Red-rumped Swallows, my first Alpine Swifts and Tree Pipit of the trip and a lot of butterflies, Green Hairstreaks, even Common Glider and Camberwell Beauties but it wasn't until my last day that I finally found the Sombre Tit which was one of my target birds for the area, didn't manage a photo but got quite good views as it hopped around at the top of a large tree. 
So I leave Bulgaria, for now, and head for Greece and the famous Lake Kerkini which is fed by the Stroma River I have been following and is only about 40Km as the migrating birds fly.

Route so far