I have the huge privilege this year to be participating in the Champions of the Flyway competition. For those who don’t know, this is a Big Day in southern Israel in the middle of migration. The goal is to raise money to help prevent bird poaching in the Mediterranean Basin, and the money raised this year is going to BirdLife Croatia and BirdLife Serbia (this is extra special for me since I currently live in the Balkans). I will be competing on the newly formed team the ABA-Leica Subadult Wheatears which is, as the name suggests, sponsored by the ABA and Leica Sports Optics. It is also the first ever Champions team composed of young birders from the ABA Area. The race is a couple weeks away but we’re still fundraising hard. If you’d like to donate, click here.
Even before I knew I would be doing Champions, I was planning on visiting the Middle East in March, so I stuck to those plans and headed out from Sarajevo to slowly work my way towards Israel, birding the whole way, until I would reach Eilat in time for the race. The first stop on my odyssey was the beautiful island of Cyprus.
I have been wanting to visit this island for a while, both for its fascinating history and its equally fascinating nature. I particularly wanted to see the two Cypriot breeding endemics: Cyprus warbler and Cyprus wheatear. I would be there too early for the wheatear unfortunately, but Cyprus warblers would be just starting to sing and mark out territories.
I flew into the Larnaca airport on the Greek section of the island. As a brief piece of historical context, Cyprus is home both to an ethnic Greek and ethnic Turkish population. An increasingly hostile relationship between the two groups came to a head in 1974 when the Turkish military invaded and occupied the northern part of the island. Ethnic cleansing soon followed, and now the island is firmly divided by a UN buffer zone into Cyprus proper in the south (inhabited by Greeks) and the self-styled “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” in the north. On this trip, I opted to stick to the Greek side, planning on visiting the Turkish side on my way back to Bosnia.
After a long, cold Balkan winter, I was relieved to find warmth, flowers, and migrants waiting for me on Cyprus and I found the air above Larnaca filled with common swifts and barn swallows. Casual birding that evening produced a string of birds characteristic of the eastern Mediterranean: zitting cisticola, Sardinian warbler, black francolin, and spur-winged lapwing, and their ilk.
The birding the next day was even better. It started with huge numbers of singing black francolins. This was my first experience with francolins and I had always expected them to be big, obvious birds. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that they are rather tough to see. They have a habit of sticking to thick brush and of refusing to flush, choosing to scuttle away instead. At one point I was within feet of a loudly singing bird and yet still failed to see it. Any frustrating with the francolins however was soon forgotten when I spotted a gull flying over. I guessed it was a yellow-legged but put my bins up just in case. Lo and behold, in the sights of my binoculars I could see that it was in fact a breeding plumaged Pallas’s gull!! While the bird didn’t stop and kept heading towards the ocean, I was overjoyed. This is an amazing looking species which I had also missed when I was in Bulgaria, making it extra special to see now.
Pallas’s Gull
The spot I was birding at was a couple of sewage ponds just south of the Larnaca airport. After being stopped by a friendly Cypriot police officer wondering what I was doing with binoculars so close to the airfield, I reached the blind overlooking the ponds. Ducks of a couple different species coated the surface and spur-winged lapwings lurked on the shores. However the real highlight came in the form of a saker which strafed the duck rafts. In the brush surrounding the pools, I found lots of migrants including my first of year hoopoes as well as Isabelline wheatears and a single crisp, male Rüppell’s warbler.
Greater Flamingos — All over the place in Cyprus
That evening I caught the bus to Ayia Napa, an extremely tacky tourist town in the east of Cyprus. While usually stuffed with drunken Brits and Russians, the town distinguishes itself by being right next to Cape Grecko National Forest Park — an excellent spot for Cyprus warbler.
From my hotel room balcony, I was pleasantly surprised to find a laughing dove, a bird which, although greatly expanding its range, is still a vagrant to Cyprus.
Laughing Dove
The next morning I discovered Cape Grecko to be a Sylvia warbler paradise. The enigmatic and classy Cyprus warbler I was able to locate within 10 minutes of arrival and over the course of the morning I had many individuals singing away in the coastal scrubland. Spectacled and Sardinian warblers were present too, but the real prize was the no less than 7 Rüppell’s warblers I had over the course of the morning. An amazing number of this somewhat scarce migrant.
Cyprus Warbler
Rüppell’s Warbler
A number of other migrants were around too including my lifer red-rumped swallow. Crested lark, extremely common on Cyprus, were also in abundance, and were as confiding as ever.
Crested Lark
Overall a fantastic morning of birding in some stunning scenery.
Cape Grecko
A couple days later, after some history oriented exploration of Cyprus, I returned to the Larnaca airport, ready to keep heading south and to see what the Middle East would have in store for me.
The Birding Place 