Sunday, February 28, 2010

High hopes...

Yesterday afternoon a handful of lucky birders witnessed quite a good passage of Pintails of over 400 birds noted. So this morning so me even earlier up from bed hoping that yesterday's passage would continue and reach a peak today...
On arriving at Cirkewwa nothing had been seen yet but a Marsh harrier. No ducks though...for now we still scanned the sea eagerly a Nothern gannet providing some distraction from the frustration.
Finally someone spotted a small flock of Pintails, 8 males and 7 females which altough did not quite make up for the lack of numbers gave satisfactory views. In fact they were only followed by another 2 Pintails.
To add to the list were 2 House martins coming in fromt the sea, a few Yelkoan shearwaters, 150+ Cory's shearwaters following a trawler, 2 Med gulls, 2 Sandwhich terns, 2 Dunnocks calling from the tamarisk trees and a Spectacled warbler male.

2 comments:

  1. hi martin, im returning to malta sat 6th march, and im following your blogs to get an idea of the birding opportunities, cory's and yelkoan,s would be firsts for me, i guess i just need to hang out on Qawra promenade, cheers for the blog, fraser, Edinburgh, Scotland.

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  2. hi,
    I suggest you opt for Cirkewwa for those species at this time of year. Find a sight were you can easily view the channel between Malta and Gozo. you'll have a better chance also of seeing other interesting species like Hoopoe on the garigue and migrating herons, ducks and Marsh Harriers. Good Luck! feel free to send me an email for more info and i suggest visiting Birding in Malta website from the links section on this blog.
    cheers

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