Cyprus has three specialities, one we’d already seen in Israel, the Cyprus Warbler. The other two are the Cyprus Scopes Owl and the Cyprus Wheatear.
Arrived late in the evening in the North/Turkish part and made a short stop close to our hotel. Heard the owl calling on our second stop.
Second day we went birding on a point into the sea, the idea being that once we had picked up the Wheatear, we could do some sea watching. The sea was completely empty and in retro perspective, the short stop we made close to Antalya before the Romania Amur Falcon twitch, was a lucky strike. Then we had good views of both of the two occurring Shearwaters in the eastern Mediterranean, Scopoli’s and Yelkoan Shearwater. Without those two bagged in Turkey, especially the Yelkoan, we would be in Shearwater-panic-mode now.
The Wheatear was a bit tricky to find though, we saw one individual from the car briefly. Eventually, at one stop where we flushed a Little Owl we got it.
The Little Owl woke a whole lot of Sardinian Warblers, and also a Cyprus Wheatear. They all were very irritated with the owl, including the Wheatear which was then easy to photograph close to the Owl.
Late in the season, birds here are already breeding and birding is generally poor. Slightly interesting was the lightly coloured subspecies of Hooded Crow.
We never had any views of the Warbler, on the other hand we didn’t search that hard.
After dinner at night, slightly drunk, we went owling again. This time we not only heard the cool little Scopes Owls, we got good views. Sneaked into a graveyard and whistled the calls.
Listen carefully to the two-note-call, this is what mainly separates it from the normal Eurasian Scopes Owl which has a one-note call.
Last day here, spent by the pool, emailing and planning the remainder of the year. Lazy.
Quite a few people suggested that we should have skipped Cyprus, or maybe shortened it and gone twitching the famous Albatross on Sylt in Germany. Lucky thing we didn’t, the Albatross is gone again (as far as we can see on Internet) . Had we hurried like crazy from Milan, we would have arrived on June 6, and dipped the Albatross. Much better then to drink beer by the pool in Cyprus.
Finally, Northern Cyprus appears to be an undiscovered gem. The three of us generally hate tourist resorts. For example the Lago d’Orta in Italy, the lake with the Muscovy Duck. That place was crawling with tourists, horrible place. Not to mention Hourgada in Egypt … brrrr. The coast of Northern Cyprus is beautiful and very relaxed. Well worth a visit.