Cape Tenaro Birder: Cuckoos, Nightingales and more Collared Flycatchers

Saturday 6 April 2019

Cuckoos, Nightingales and more Collared Flycatchers

Summary - Saturday 6th April

After a dreadful start due to the weather (but a welcome lie in) it proved to be an excellent day's birding with good numbers of a wide variety of species present. The most abundant species were Nightingale, Subalpine Warbler, Hoopoe and Pied & Collared Flycatchers. Numbers of other species also showed a marked increase: Wryneck, Cuckoo, Woodchat Shrike, Whitethroat and Black Redstart.

Presumably due to birds making landfall at the first opportunity there were good numbers on the southern part of the headland including 20 Subalpine Warblers on the approach to the lighthouse.

We also had our first Sedge Warblers (3), Garden Warblers (2), Quail (1) and Common Sandpipers (3).

Grounded Migrants: 25 Hoopoe, 7 Wryneck, 5 Cuckoo, 7 Woodchat Shrike, 8 Wood Warbler, 33 Blackcap, 11 Whitethroat, 71 Subalpine Warbler, 71 Nightingale, 6 Redstart, 4 Black Redstart, 14 Black-eared Wheatear, 11 Northern Wheatear, 20 Pied Flycatcher and 34 Collared Flycatcher.

Visible Passage: a 20 minute seawatch late morning saw 6 Scopli's Shearwaters go east and 11 Yelkouan Shearwaters fly west. No other obvious movement with the exception of a Purple Heron that came in from the south and then veered out west without making landfall.

Raptors: 4 Marsh Harrier, 1 Kestrel, 1 Sparrowhawk and our second Merlin.

Bird Ringing: Nets not opened until 10.00 and ringing from then until 17.30. A reasonable day, with the biggest variety of species so far: 9 Subalpine Warbler, 8 Pied Fly, 5 Nightingale, 3 Blackcap, 3 Collared Fly, 2 Wood Warbler, singles of: Wryneck, Woodchat, Sedge Warbler, Chiffchaff, Sardinian Warbler and Whitethroat.

Overall Total: 36 birds ringed from 94m of nets.

Weather: Torrential rain all night with near gale force NE winds. Rain lighter after 08.00 and had stopped by 09.30. Overcast. Weather improved during the morning to give blue skies and excellent, later extraordinary visibility (Crete was clearly visible over 150km away). Wind seemed to stay in NE or ENE all day Force 4-5.