This Birding Life

by Stephen Moss

  Every birding hotspot has its local expert, and Mallorca is no exception. Graham Hearl has been visiting the island for almost three decades, and a few years ago he took the plunge and came to live here permanently. Graham’s greatest service to visiting birders is his excellent Birdwatching Guide to Mallorca, which gives step-by-step directions to the best sites on the island.

  On a fine, sunny morning, he took us up a scenic, winding road, leading into the mountains. At first, we scanned the deep blue skies without much success, but as we sat down to eat our packed lunch we had excellent views of Black Vultures, one of Europe’s largest flying birds. This magnificent raptor once almost went extinct in Mallorca, but thanks to a reintroduction project there is now a healthy breeding population on the island.

  We also spent a day at S’Albufera, Mallorca’s premier reserve. Despite lying just outside the tourist hotspot of Alcudia, the Albufera is one of the very best wetlands in the whole of the Mediterranean. Moustached Warblers skulk deep in the reedbeds, while Kentish Plovers and Black-winged Stilts feed on every patch of mud.

  My ‘target bird’ here was another reintroduction, the bizarre Purple Swamphen. This giant relative of the Coot and Moorhen was a particular favourite with the Romans, who prized its tender flesh, but it died out here during the nineteenth century. Now it thrives, unharmed, in the safety of the reserve.

  On our final day we headed south, to the windswept Cabo de Salinas, where we watched distant Cory’s and Balearic Shearwaters gliding across the waves. Later, at nearby Cabo Blanco, I finally caught up with two elusive Mallorcan specialities. Thekla Larks were fairly easy to see as they sung from bushes and telegraph wires. Marmora’s Warbler proved much harder to pin down, but we finally heard its distinctive scratchy song and caught a glimpse of this western Mediterranean endemic, a darker version of our own Dartford Warbler.

  As a starter, this was great, but I can’t wait to get back in a week or so to witness the wonders of spring migration. By the way, David enjoyed his trip – even if he still can’t understand why his dad is so fascinated by birds.

  The naming of birds

  MAY 1999

  Eleonora of Arborea was, by all accounts, a remarkable woman. Fourteenth-century Sardinia wasn’t exactly a bastion of sexual equality, yet Eleonora triumphed against the odds to become ruler of the island. Even today, almost 600 years after her death, she is hailed as Sardinia’s national heroine.

  It’s a nice story, but what does it have to do with birding in Mallorca? Only that one of the most sought-after birds on the island is a long-winged, slim and elegant bird of prey, named after the Sardinian monarch herself. And like its eponymous heroine, Eleonora’s Falcon is a remarkable bird. It spends the winter months in Madagascar, and returns to islands around the Mediterranean during the last week of April or first week of May.

  But unlike most migrants, it doesn’t begin courtship and nesting the moment it gets back. Instead, it waits until July or even August before breeding. By this unusual evolutionary strategy the adults are able to feed their growing chicks on songbird migrants as they return south during September and October.

  It wasn’t until the very last day of filming in Mallorca that the Birding with Bill Oddie team finally managed to find Eleonora’s Falcon. We were walking along the Boquer Valley, in the north of the island, when we noticed what looked like a flock of Swifts high over the hills above. A closer look revealed the unmistakable shape of hunting falcons: the Eleonora’s were back!

  Eleonora’s Falcon isn’t the only Mallorcan speciality named after a historical figure. Indeed, of the four other ‘target birds’ which every visitor to the island wants to see, only one, Black Vulture, is not. After a fair amount of effort, we not only saw the other three, but captured them on video too.

  The first, Audouin’s Gull, was fairly easy to film, as one bird had the habit of wandering up and down the beach opposite the Hotel Pollentia each morning. One of the world’s rarest gulls, it has a peculiar, rather fastidious walk, looking down its beak at you as if questioning your right to share the same stretch of sand.

  Audouin’s Gull shows up the tit-for-tat nature of the way birds are often named. It was discovered in Sardinia by a French ornithologist, Monsieur Payraudeau, who named it after his colleague in Paris, Jean Victor Audouin. Perhaps Payraudeau was hoping Audouin would return the compliment, but unfortunately he failed to take the hint, and while Audouin’s name is forever linked to this elegant gull, Payraudeau’s is long forgotten.

  In a nice historical connection, Marmora’s Warbler was named after the nineteenth-century Italian ornithologist who discovered Eleonora’s Falcon, Alberto della Marmora. The bird itself is a skulking little warbler which dwells in ‘garrigue’, the mile after mile of thorny scrub which hugs the coast like a blanket. Like Eleonora’s Falcon and Audouin’s Gull, Marmora’s Warbler has a very restricted range, being confined to a few scattered locations in the western Mediterranean.

  The final member of the quartet lives in the garrigue too. Thekla Lark is a fairly nondescript, small, brown bird, looking like a plump, crested Skylark. However, its name conceals the most touching story of all. Thekla Brehm was the only girl in a family of seven children born to the eminent German ornithologist Christian Ludwig Brehm. Unfortunately, she died in her early twenties from heart disease, in 1857. In the meantime, her two older brothers had been on an expedition to Spain, during which they had ‘collected’ a previously unknown species of lark. Her grief-stricken father named the bird after his beloved daughter, granting Thekla a little piece of immortality.

  An Aquatic lifestyle

  JUNE 1999

  My son’s Pocket Oxford Dictionary defines the word ‘aquatic’ as ‘living in or on water’. So it may come as a surprise that there is a species of bird named Aquatic Warbler. If this conjures up an image of a little brown bird living in a swamp and wearing a snorkel and flippers, this isn’t too far from the truth.

  Aquatic Warbler has the unenviable distinction of being Europe’s rarest migratory songbird. As a breeding species, it is confined to a narrow zone stretching from the former East Germany to the River Ob in western Siberia. At the heart of this range lies its stronghold: the wetlands of eastern Poland.

  It was here in the Biebrza Marshes, on a wet and windy morning, that I finally managed to get good views of this elusive little bird. We were driving along in an old Chevy van with top Polish bird guide Marek Borkowski, when he stopped by the side of what looked like an overgrown, weedy field.

  Our first reaction was surprise: why would one of Europe’s rarest birds choose to live in this undistinguished looking habitat? Once we ventured closer, though, we could see why Marek had insisted we wore Wellington boots. The ‘field’ was in fact submerged under almost a foot of water, out of which protruded rank grass and sedges, along with a few scattered, stunted bushes.

  It didn’t look as if any bird could survive in such a bizarre, watery environment. But then, above the sound of Skylarks and Meadow Pipits, we heard a short but distinctive song, described by my companion Derek as sounding like a cross between a rattle and a canary. We stopped to listen, hampered by the rain and wind. I gazed over the distant sedges, straining to see a buff-coloured bird against buff-coloured vegetation. Suddenly, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Just a few metres in front of us, on a stem barely protruding above the water, was our prize: a singing male Aquatic Warbler.

  One challenge had already been achieved: to see the bird. Now we faced an even greater one: to capture it on video. Immediately we went into action: I jammed the heavy tripod into the swampy ground, Derek used his ample frame and an umbrella to shield the camera from the wind, while cameraman Andrew adjusted focus and exposure and pressed the ‘on’ button. The tape began to run.

  We held our breath, not daring to ask if the image passed Andrew’s seriously high standards. A minute or so later the bird ducked down out of view, and he gave his verdict: ‘Stonking. Eight out of ten’. High
praise indeed: and quite possibly the first time Aquatic Warbler has been captured on video.

  Once the breeding season is over, Aquatic Warblers take a rather unorthodox migration route westwards, through the Low Countries and France, to their winter-quarters somewhere in western Africa. Each year, a few birds cross the Channel, turning up at south coast sites such as Radipole Lake and Marazion Marsh. It was here, almost ten years ago, that I caught a brief glimpse of three tawny-yellow juveniles, my first encounter with the species.

  Of all the regular visitors to our shores, Aquatic Warbler is surely one of the least known. Its skulking habits don’t advertise its presence, and it lacks the appeal of other, more glamorous, endangered species. But the very existence of this little bird at the end of the twentieth century represents a triumph of biodiversity over human interference. It has evolved to live in one of Europe’s most unusual habitats, and despite a long-term decline, continues to hang on by a thread in its marshy home. For this feat alone, Aquatic Warbler deserves to survive.

  Beside the seaside — Stateside

  SEPTEMBER 1999

  Last month I took my son James on a trip to a Victorian seaside resort. We swam in the sea, played crazy golf and had breakfast at a beachfront café. During the trip I also managed to get a dozen lifers, including two waders, a woodpecker, a tit, a swallow, a warbler, a sparrow and a finch. But despite the familiar ring to these birds, we weren’t visiting Brighton or Blackpool — or anywhere on this side of the Atlantic-but Cape May, New Jersey, USA.

  I love birding on the other side of the Atlantic. American birds are a mirror image of European ones, with instantly recognisable families, but a very different selection of species. As well as the everyday gulls, terns and waders, we also saw waxwings, ibises, and even hummingbirds. The US gives you the best of both worlds: the birds aren’t as confusing as in the tropics, but they can be just as rewarding.

  Take those hummingbirds. There was something surreal about watching a Ruby-throated Hummingbird feeding from a nectar dispenser barely a couple of metres away, while I was sitting on a porch drinking cranberry juice, in what looked like an English country garden.

  Pat and Clay Sutton’s garden is justly famous as a haven for breeding and migrating birds. So while James curled up in a comfy hammock, I enjoyed views of a nesting Carolina Wren. Meanwhile, a Carolina Chickadee called from the trees above, sounding uncannily like a Great Tit. A sudden shower in this drought-parched landscape brought a flurry of activity, with Yellow Warblers, American Redstarts and a Cedar Waxwing – nothing out of the ordinary for the locals, but exciting birds for me.

  Meanwhile, the holidaymakers thronged the beaches, oblivious to the presence of hundreds of Laughing Gulls, still sporting their dark-hooded breeding plumage. A hundred years ago this was a rare bird on the New Jersey coast, but thanks to its ability to live alongside people it is now one of the commonest.

  Further along the shore, a thousand Sanderlings raced along the tideline, frantically feeding at this pit stop on their long journey from the Arctic to South America. James dug a trench in the wet sand, while I watched a single Piping Plover, a rare and vulnerable species which still nests in small numbers along this coast.

  I finally managed to drag James away from the beach, and we walked through one of Cape May’s best-known birding sites, the meadows. As virtually the only remaining wetland in the current drought, the meadows act as a magnet to migrant waders, or ‘shore-birds’, as they are known on this side of the pond.

  The next day I took a guided walk around the meadows with Pete Dunne, director of Cape May Bird Observatory. Tall, good-looking and with a quiet air of authority, Pete is arguably the man most responsible for encouraging the growing popularity of birding in the US. He is also author of some of the best books ever written on the subject of why we watch birds.

  This was the perfect opportunity to get to grips with difficult species such as Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Least and Semi-palmated Sandpipers, and the ultimate identification headache, Long-billed and Short-billed Dowitchers (no, the length of the bills isn’t the best way to tell them apart…).

  Later that day we called in at the bird observatory. James added a Bald Eagle to his collection of fluffy toys, while I got the latest birding info from observatory staffers Sheila and Marleen, as they answered an endless stream of telephone enquiries about birding. They told me what I already suspected: that although the birds were good in August, they would be even better in September, when I’ll be back in Cape May. As they regaled me with tales of warbler, wader and raptor migration, I couldn’t wait to return.

  Very flat, Holland

  OCTOBER 1999

  In the north of Holland, the sky and land and water melt into each other, and on a clear day the view seems to go on forever. There were lots of clear days in late August, when I visited the very first ‘Top of Holland Bird Festival’. It was held in a field on the edge of the Lauwesmeer, a huge expanse of lakes and marshes by the North Sea. This is a great area for birds all year round, with vast flocks of geese in winter, singing Bluethroats in spring and hordes of migrants passing south in autumn.

  From the festival site itself, we watched flocks of Spoonbills passing overhead, and Buzzards above the nearby wood. On a walk nearby we saw Caspian Terns, Spotted Crakes, and more than a dozen species of wader. Because the Netherlands are that little bit further east, Dutch birdlife is markedly different from back home: the commonest waders were Little Stints and Wood Sandpipers, and there wasn’t a Dunlin to be seen.

  A couple of miles up the road there stood a modern corporate building, all glass and steel, surrounded by a lake. There was a small crowd of cars, so we stopped and enquired if there was anything about. There certainly was: two minuscule Red-necked Phalaropes, stopping off on the long journey from the Arctic to their wintering grounds in the Arabian Sea. True to form, these peculiar little birds swam around in tight circles, frantically picking insects off the water surface with their needle-sharp bills.

  Like its big brother, the British Birdwatching Fair, the festival itself boasted a mixture of the local and the global. Dutch birders mingled with visitors from five continents, as far away as Trinidad & Tobago, Jordan, Syria, Costa Rica and New Zealand.

  After leaving the festival we headed south, stopping off to watch birds along the way. Despite being one of the most heavily populated regions on Earth, the central Netherlands is an excellent birding area. Flooded bulb fields were a magnet for more migrating waders, including large flocks of Curlew Sandpipers that look a bit like long-billed, oversized Dunlin. They undertake one of the most extraordinary journeys of all migrants: from their breeding grounds on the Siberian tundra, south and west through Europe, to spend the winter in Africa. Some autumns thousands pass through Britain; other years hardly any at all. Judging by the numbers we encountered, this has been a good breeding season.

  As a final Continental fling before returning home, we stopped off at Le Portel, a seaside resort just outside Boulogne. This is one of the best places in Europe to get close-up views of Mediterranean Gulls – providing you’ve brought something to get their attention. Having forgotten to bring a loaf of bread, I improvised with a bar of chocolate. Gulls are nothing if not adaptable, and they soon developed a sweet tooth, flying up to grab the offering while giving feather-by-feather views.

  Mediterranean Gull was once quite a rare bird in Europe, mainly confined to southern and eastern parts of the continent. Since the 1930s, however, it has spread north and west at a rapid rate, and has even begun to breed in the British Isles. So next time you see a flock of gulls, look for one with a blood-red bill, dark black hood and white wing-tips – and try offering it a piece of chocolate.

  The wonder of warblers

  NOVEMBER 1999

  European warblers are a bit of an acquired taste. Their small size, muted colours and evasive habits make them difficult to identify even if you get a good view – and usually you don’t. But though New World warblers sh
are the elusive nature of their Old World cousins, they more than make up for this with their stunning colours.

  Until I visited Cape May this autumn, I’d only seen a dozen of the 30 or so warbler species regularly found on the east coast of the US. In one memorable morning’s birding I almost doubled this tally.

  Not that it was easy. We started off on Higbees Dyke, arguably the best place to witness autumn songbird migration in the whole of North America. A cold front had passed the day before, followed by light north-westerly winds: ideal for what local expert Richard Crossley described as a flight. He had warned us to get up early and be on the dyke as the sun rose, at about half past six.

  So there we were: a score of souls waiting in breathless anticipation of a birding spectacle to remember. With realism typical of his native Yorkshire, Richard warned us that things might not go according to plan. Like migrating songbirds everywhere, warblers are anything but predictable, and we feared that the whole event might be a sad anticlimax.

  Then a dot flew over our heads. Followed by another. And another. The flight had begun. My first reaction was panic: how could I hope to identify these airborne specks, especially as there were several species I had never seen before? The locals held no such fears, and a steady chorus of name-checks hit the autumnal air. Wilson’s, Yellow, Prairie, Black-throated Blue, Blackpoll… the list went on and on. Occasionally other birds were seen: orioles, tanagers and chunky Rose-breasted Grosbeaks – even a tiny Red-breasted Nuthatch that almost landed on our heads as it passed.

  By now, two things were working to my advantage: the light was better, and I was starting to feel more confidence in my identification skills. As the warblers flew only yards above us, I could make out the black undertail of Magnolia, the humbug-like appearance of Black-and-white, and the distinctive jizz of Northern Waterthrush. Occasionally there would be one which baffled me completely, until I was rescued by Richard’s confident call of a scarcer species such as Worm-eating Warbler.