Day 2: Formentera

Another beautiful day dawned in Ibiza and the Villa Rosa birding posse set out on the Ibiza-Formentera ferry this morning. The weather was typical Mediterranean in spring with crystal clear blue skies and a sea so azure it could almost melt your heart. As we left Ibiza port we had great views of the old town, along with Audouin’s and Yellow-legged Gulls, plus a Pallid Swift amongst the Common Swifts. 

Ibiza Town and Dalt Vila from the ferry

View from the ferry

View towards Ibiza

It’s only a 30-minute crossing and on this perfect morning there wasn’t too much shearwater activity although we did pick up a few distant Scopoli’s Shearwaters. Upon landing in Formentera we drove some 25 minutes to the far eastern side of this lovely island and based ourselves for much of the day at Far de la Mola. 

Far de la Mola

This huge promontory reminds me of Portland Bill a little bit and we were hoping for some migration magic. As the winds had been switching between easterly and south-westerly I had high hopes of some migrants but initially it wasn’t looking too promising. After half an hour we headed across some fields with low bushes and found the area to be alive with birds! We were almost immediately into double figures of Common Redstarts with a sprinkling of Northern Wheatears, along with Willow Warblers before Mike exclaimed he had a Bluethroat. And oh boy what a great bird. The totally blue throat and lack of a red or white spot meant it was what HBW refer to as an Iberian Bluethroat (ssp azuricollis) and what a cracker! 

Our first view of Bluethroat

Iberian Bluethroat - check out the lack of a spot on the throat

We watched it feeding in the field against a stone wall for ages, with Iberian Yellow Wagtails, groups of Greater Short-toed Larks, numerous Balearic Woodchat Shrikes, some resident Thekla’s Larks and Sardinian Warblers, and at least 4 Blue Rock Thrushes vying for our attention. 

Greater Short-toed Lark

There were also numerous Linnets, EuropeanGoldfinches and European Serins singing and flying constantly around us and the setting was totally mesmeric. Just perfect in fact. We spread out a little in the hopes of finding more goodies but the late morning hour meant activity was dying down and apart from some Red-legged Partridges and a migrating Booted Eagle we had to content ourselves with the commoner migrants. The Bluethroat was refound a little later and showed very well at much closer range and we found it really hard to pull ourselves away from such a stunner. 

We drove to a nearby village for a spot of lunch and coffee before returning to the headland. Taking a different route we walked along the rocky path and into a grove of pine trees hoping to find something sheltering in the shade of these large trees. 

Common Firecrest

There were more redstarts and even a European Pied Flycatcher but not much else, apart from a confiding Common Firecrest that we watched for some time and a Peregrine Falcon circling overhead. 

Far del Cap de Barbaria

So we drove to Far del Cap de Barbaria, a headland facing due south on the other side of the island. There’s totally different habitat here with low scrub and rocky open ground. It was 5pm by now and a little quiet apart from another Balearic Woodchat Shrike. Just inland the vegetation is better with more bushes, fields and trees and around one meadow there were at least 4 Whinchats, as well as yet more Common Redstarts and even a Balearic Warbler. 

Whinchat

Leaving here we drove around Estany Pudente, a series of salt pans and lagoons. We were able to pull up alongside a few Kentish Plovers and got a few nice photos. 

Estany Pudente

There were also Common Redshanks, Common Greenshanks and a few Black-winged Stilts to look at before heading back to the port and onto the 7.30pm ferry back to Ibiza. It was a beautiful sailing and the water so very calm allowing superb views of many Scopoli’s Shearwaters close to the ship. 

Scopoli's Shearwater showed well from the ferry this evening

A group of Balearic Shearwaters flew quickly past the bow and across the calm waters before we reached Ibiza and our waiting dinner. Quite a day really!

Balearic Spring Migration Tour.

With the first southerly winds of the spring and the warmest day of the year so far greeting the arrival of our group we headed the short distance to Ses Salinas. And what a difference a day makes, as yesterday and the preceding week had been dominated by very cool weather and gale force NW winds. So with renewed vigour and a spring in our step we began birding on the party island of Ibiza! 

Things began slowly as there wasn’t too much to see from the hide but we enjoyed views of Iberian Yellow Wagtails, including some incredibly bright individuals. Several displaying Zitting Cisticolas were pretty close and we even scoped one bird, whilst a very smart-looking Sardinian Warbler was nesting in a nearby bush. Out on the saltpans were over 50 Greater Flamingos, newly arrived from who knows where? There hadn’t been any here just 2 days ago! Common Shelduck numbers have been gradually increasing and today over 70 were present, along with Gadwall, Mallard, and both Kentish and Little Ringed Plovers. Driving out of the site got us close to a Woodchat Shrike of the badius race and is a potential split as Iberian Woodchat Shrike, plus a couple of Red-legged Partridges. We then drove around to the other side and in no time at all were watching the endemic Balearic Warbler singing from his song perch. 

Balearic Warbler

 We enjoyed first class views of this much-wanted bird for a good 10 minutes, as well as a pair of high-flying Western Marsh Harriers and several flyby Mediterranean Shags before walking back to the car and driving to our base for the next 4 nights at the fabulous Villa Rosa. 

Over lunch and a siesta we heard some migrating European Bee-eaters somewhere in the distance and wondered if we’d ever catch up with them…? So we drove down to the nearby harbour at 4pm and spent a very enjoyable hour watching and photographing up to 30 stunning Audouin’s Gulls. This is a really fine bird whether you’re into gulls or not and when they are a mere 2 metres away from you then you can’t fail to be impressed. I don’t know of anywhere else you can get such outstanding views of this charismatic gull. 

This must be the best place to see Audouin's Gull

In my opinion this is a sexy bird and at this time of year they are getting rather frisky as breeding is imminent, combined with all sorts of other behaviour as they scavenged from a fishing boat to their raucous call we had it all. Moving on to a viewpoint looking up to Cap Negret we scoped some distant Scopoli’s Shearwaters and found a pair of Blue Rock Thrush. 

Moving on to an area of meadow, orchards and agriculture just inland from the NW coast, this is a little migrant trap in the right conditions. Our arrival in this picturesque area was greeted by a large flock of hirundines, comprising mainly of Barn Swallows but with several pretty Red-rumped Swallows and a couple of CommonHouse Martins as well, plus a calling European Turtle Dove that flew alongside one of the meadows. We stopped beside one field to look at a pair of Thekla’s Larks and in doing so found ourselves amidst a fall of northerly-bound migrants. The fields and meadows hereabouts were full of Common Redstarts and everywhere we looked there were male redstarts either in the trees or feeding on the ground. A flock of Tree Pipits were also here, along with several male Pied Flycatchers, Willow Warbler, Common Whitethroat, Turtle Dove and a cracking pale-phase Booted Eagle. We also heard European Bee-eaters from somewhere in the distance and then spotted them flying across the valley so decided to go and look for them. Admittedly it was a bit of divine inspiration to turn right and not left at a junction resulted in us finding the flock and watching them feed over the orchards and scoping one beautiful perched individual. Also in the area was European Robin, Song Thrush, many displaying European Serins and other common birds. So a very good day on this highly underwatched island and we were all excited to see what tomorrows excursion to Formentera would bring.

NE Brazil Day 15: Porto Seguro

A bonus couple of hours was fitted in as all of our flights were later in the day saw us visiting some nearby mangroves where the first bird of the day was the delightful endemic Little Wood-Rail walking slowly below us. Wow! 

Little Wood Rail - endemic

If that wasn’t enough, a pair of Mangrove Rails suddenly appeared and chased the wood-rail away. 

Mangrove Rail - split from Clapper Rail

But no worries as we saw both species several times on our short walk, as we searched and found both Bicolored Conebill and Plain-bellied Emerald. 

Bicolored Conebill

After a successful little visit, including sightings of Short-crested Flycatcher and Straight-billed Woodcreeper, we headed back to the hotel, stopping along the way to see a trio of Bat Falcons, a bird that had eluded us until now. 

Short-crested Flycatcher

Straight-billed Woodcreeper

New trip birds either side of breakfast were Tropical Mockingbird, Semipalmated Plover, Sanderling, and Orange-winged Amazon bringing our trip list up to 409 species seen, including 89 Brazilian endemics. We also had only our second sighting of East Brazilian Chachalaca and a Geoffrey’s Black-tufted Marmoset as well. Apparently the monkey is of interest to some people...!

Monkey!

This had been a most amazing tour with the incomparable Ciro Albano at the helm and without his expert local knowledge none of this would have been possible.

NE Brazil Day 14: Veracel Reserve

Breakfast at 5am was followed by a 25 minutes journey to Veracel Reserve again and we enjoyed another excellent morning’s birding. At the entrance we scoped an endemic Red-browed Amazon perched at the top of a tree, and we followed this with Swallow-wing, some Reichenow’s Parrots flying over (split from Blue-headed Parrot), Black-necked Aracari, perched Peach-fronted Parrot, and then we called in an endemic Black-cheeked Gnateater. 

Black-necked Aracari

Peach-fronted Parakeet

Walking along the sandy track, a cracking White-crowned Manakin posed nicely, and shortly after we found one of the rarest endemic hummers in Brazil – Hook-billed Hermit perched next to the track. Wow! We then spent some time scanning the edges of some open clearings for cotingas and eventually we had a couple views of endemic male White-winged Cotingas. Oh yes! 

White-crowned Manakin

Hook-billed Hermit - endemic

 Probably the weirdest find of the morning was a very young and recently fledged white-fluffy Common Potoo perched in a trackside tree. This spot also held Ochre-bellied Flycatcher, Red-legged Honeycreepers and some Blue Dacnis. At the next clearing a Zone-tailed Hawk and a King Vulture flew over.

Common Potoo

The next spot we checked out along a side track held 4 species of manakin: a male Blue-backed, female Red-headed, female White-bearded and male White-crowned. Nearby a pair of Sooretama Slaty-Antshrikes showed well. 

Sooretama Slaty-Antshrike

Moving on we found 2 Screaming Pihas, called in an Eared Pygmy-Tyrantand a Wedge-billed Woodcreeper. By now it was 10:45am and the temperature was up in the 90’s so we headed back to the hotel for a long siesta.

In the late afternoon we headed back to the reserve and staked out an open area but didn’t really have any joy with parakeets coming in to roost. However, we walked a side trail and had fabulous views of a very bold Black-cheeked Gnateater that called and called from a branch very close to our astonished faces. 

Black-cheeked Gnateater - endemic

A short distance away we had some decent looks at a Ringed Woodpecker. Interestingly, HBW splits this species into Amazonian and Atlantic Black-breasted Woodpeckers – the bird we saw being the latter species. We saw a few other common species but basically we waited until dark before calling in a fantastic Black-capped Screech-Owl that posed beautifully in a dense tangle. 

Black-capped Screech-Owl

We literally had to crunch our way across the dry leaf litter to get into position and it didn’t care a jot! Ecstatic with this, we had just returned to the main track when a Mottled Owl began calling and sure enough, and yes you guessed it, this bird flew in and stared balefully down at us….. giving great views! 

Mottled Owl

A nice end to a good day… yet another on our NE Brazil tour..!

NE Brazil Day 13: Serra Bonita - Porto Seguro

We left after the usual 5.30am breakfast and headed down to the steamy lowlands for better views of Banded Cotinga. Well, we waited an hour and had a female come into the palm fruits but not the male we hoped for. We did scope some endemic Golden-capped Parakeets feeding in a huge tree and see some commoner species including Scaly-headed Parrot, Rufous-breasted Hermit, Cliff Flycatcher, before setting out on a trail where we quickly found our main target, Eastern Striped Manakin. 

Eastern Striped Manakin

What a corker this is and this bird performed amazingly well and kept coming back to the same branch. A Buff-throated Woodcreeper seen along the trail was also new for the trip. Once we’d had our fill of this bird we walked back to the clearing and Mark spotted a fantastic male Banded Cotinga in a large tree. Again, what a bird!

Leaving here we drove some 200kms to the coastal town of Porto Seguro in southern Bahia state. After lunch and a siesta, because boy it’s hot here, we headed to Veracel Reserve some 25 minutes away. This white-sand forest patch was quite productive despite the mid-afternoon heat and the first bird we saw was a Grey-crowned Flatbill. 

White-bellied Tanager - split by HBW from Turquoise Tanager

A mad 15 minute spell resulted in Band-tailed Antwren, Silvery-flanked Antwren, Sooretama Slaty Antshrike and a Bahia Antwren– all endemics. A flock of White-bellied Tanagers (split by HBW from Turquoise Tanager), female White-chinned Sapphire and a Brown Schiffornis. We stayed until dark but failed to get a whiff of White-winged Potoo.