Our first full day and we certainly filled it! The weather was just dandy, bright sunshine all day with a cooling breeze in the afternoon.
We assembled in the car park at 6:30am and drove the short distance to Metochi Lake, it was a little on the cool side so a fleece was necessary. The water level of the pool was high and so was the vegetation so it was hard to find reasonable viewing points to see the reed beds. The surface of the water was like a mirror and a mist sat just above the surface we half expected a an arm to break the water from below and thrust a sword skyward!
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| Metochi Lake |
The air was full of bird song and we quickly located the sources, Cetti's Warbler sat out nicely as did Sedge Warbler and Reed Warbler but it took awhile for the Great Reed Warbler to show. Common Nightingale joined the chorus, a distance Hoopoe and a couple of Golden Orioles added a diversion.
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| Little Crake |
Several moorhens and a Little Grebe added their calls but the most conspicuous birds were the Little Bitterns, they chased one another around, we saw at least 8! There were also a group of roosting Night herons (9) and a single Purple Heron flew over. It took us a little time but eventually all of the group saw Little Crake, we located two females and a male, we all got good scope views of this individual;.
After breakfast was set off for the local salt pans via the Tsiknias River, we made a couple of stops to look
at waders on the river and on shingle banks, the ubiquitous Wood Sandpiper was everywhere as usual, but we did find a Redshank.Several Black-headed Buntings sat in the hedgerows and sang to us as we passed by. At the pans one of our first birds was a Spur-winged Plover, in fact there were two of them, a great species to see on Lesvos and a very uncommon passing migrant. Along the same causeway we found a Green Sandpiper and lots of Black-winged Stilts. A flock of Common Terns fed over the channel and huge flocks of Avocets and Greater Flamingos sat in the nearby pans. A Long-legged Buzzard was seen circling over the distant hillside.
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| Spur-winged Plover |
We drove round to the Alykes sheep fields and found small pools with more species feeding there: Great White Egret, Purple Heron, Little Egret, Glossy Ibis and many Wood sandpipers. A Coomon Snipe was nice find. We walked for an hour in the main water meadows which were virtually dried out but we did find a few species: Kentish Plover, Ruddy Shelduck, Red-throated Pipit (3), Short-toed Lark, Whinchat and a Lesser grey Shrike were the best finds.Along the beach we saw Eurasian Curlew, Great Cormorant and not much else.
On the way to Achladeri pine woods we stopped at the marshes at Mesa where we spent sometime viewing from and old bridge. Six Black Storks circled over the hill as we walked down the track to view some distant waders. A flock of Yellow Wagtails fed near a flock of sheep watched by a flock of bird-watchers, there were Black-headed, Grey-headed, Blue-headed and variants of the three. The waders seen were Curlew Sandpiper, Little Stint and a Greenshank.
Along the road to Achladeri we stopped to look at a couple of Woodchat Shrikes and a Black-eared Wheatear, very nice. The first thing we did in the woods was to sit in the shade and eat our picnic lunch. A walk produced very little: Chaffinches, Serin and a pair of beautiful Masked Shrikes. Our search for the Kruper's Nuthatch proved fruitless, it was late in the afternoon and the wrong time to be looking.
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| Masked Shrike |
We drove back to pans for quick look before heading back to the hotel, we found a couple of new species for the tour list, Stone Curlew (3) were seen from the raised hide and a couple of Little Owls sat out in the afternoon sunshine. A few of the group decided to go for a swim in the hotel's pool whilst the rest rest went back out birding for an hour or so. We visited the local sight for Scop's Owl and saw Long-eared Owl too, a chick was found sitting on a nest high up in a eucalyptus tree.
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| Scop's Owl |
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| Long-eared Owl (chick) |
Finally we visited the Tsiknias river for our evening patrol, we didn't find any new species but we had great views of several interesting and colourful ones such as: Little Bittern Little Crake, Black headed Bunting, Glossy Ibis and Yellow Wagtails.
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| Glossy Ibis |
Dinner was at eight and our log call followed that, we had seen just under 90 species for the day.
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