Today, we stayed more or less local and did very little traveling mainly in the area. The third day of our trip was one of the strongest for the moment.
Pre-breakfast walk
For our pre-breakfast walk, we visited again the local city park trying to find the Scops Owl. Well, we couldn’t find it but we saw some other good birds. I heard a Syrian Woodpecker and we had Eastern Olivaceous Warbler and a Common Redstart.
After breakfast, we headed to the most picturesque valley in the country rich in birds. Shortly after we entered the valley I stopped and we started logging birds. They were absolutely everywhere. It was difficult to choose where to look. Bee-eaters were flying from every direction, Syrian woodpecker was drumming on the high poplar trees, Lesser-spotted Woodpecker was calling from the other side, Lesser Grey Shrike was hunting a few metres away from us and Turtle Doves, Orioles and Rollers were calling all the time. Absolutely amazing!
Further down the road we had our first Barred Warbler and Olive Tree Warbler!
We did a fantastic walk along the road to enjoy the scenery and the birds. We saw our first Hobby and the star of the morning has got be a brilliant Chukar Partridge which stood on the top of a hill for ages.
Further along we stopped again to look at a pair of Egyptian Vultures, then 4 Black Storks appeared, then 2 Hobbies and two Kestrels. Oh my, Where to look! One of the participants said: “I have never seen such a gathering of birds outside the migration period.” It was indeed truly rich in birdlife!
We had a fantastic morning!
After lunch
For lunch we stopped at a roadside water spring and ate the supplies we got from a shop earlier on.
After lunch we visited the area of a local vulture feeding station. However, it was already very quiet, there was no feeding for the vultures and we only heard a single call of a Sardinian Warbler. The better bet was to go down into town for a cup of coffee.
As we stopped the van I head a Syrian Woodpecker. Everybody jumped out of the van and ran to see it. It was actually a pair that was returning to a tree to collect sap. What a great bird!
In the late afternoon we stopped in the vicinity of our hotel which was in the caldera of a volcano. Our first Blue Rock Thrush was singing from the top of a cliff, two Golden Eagles soared above the cliff across the valley and a single Black Vulture turned up to confirm my words that this was The place to see that bird.
We had dinner sitting on the terrace of our hotel enjoying the calling Scops Owls from the nearby park!
What a great end of the day!
See the blogs from the previous days on my blog here.