Brussels - Blackbird

As birders there are probably two questions we are asked more than any others; why and which? Why do we do it, and which is our favourite bird?

I used to hate these questions. The first seemed unanswerable in any meaningful way, and the second facile. I have since developed an answer of kinds to the “why” question, which I’ll elucidate some other time. But for a long time I really thought that there was no answer to the “which” question. It was like being asked what my favourite drink is – the answer, of course, being that it depends. Is the weather hot or cold? Have I been outside all day, or inside reading? Is there food? What kind? Where am I in the world? All these things matter. The answer is contextual.

But then I went to Australia. This was years ago, back in the late 1990s, I’d met a girl, of course. She’d been working with horses in the village next to where I was living at the time in the Cotswolds, and we’d met in the pub. A romance blossomed, but then she had to head back to Australia. Or so I told myself. In fact, she didn’t have to, she chose to, and looking back with the benefit of hindsight I should perhaps have picked up on the important signal evident in that distinction. Still, I was young, etc, etc…

Anyway, for a couple of short visits I ended up in New South Wales, putting a brave face on a decaying relationship, as you do - and birding, as you also do. Although I’d travelled outside Europe before, I’d really only dipped my toes; some time East of the Urals in arctic Siberia, a few weeks in Lebanon, a couple of weeks in Turkey. Only one of these places was outside the Western Palearctic, and then only just, so I was simply not prepared for the shock of a totally new avifauna. With the exception of Feral Pigeons (Columba livia var. dom.), nothing was familiar. It was overwhelming. So much was new that I now have trouble remembering many of the birds I saw. I was in a visual world of Parrots and Honeycreepers and an aural world which, with the exception of a couple of Lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae) heard in the Bush one day, seemed to consist of nothing but squawks and screams. They well reflected my mood.

By hook and by crook, and with happy and less happy detours, we came to the town of Berrima. A place built to be big, but which has stayed charmingly small and has been left with a legacy of grand neoclassical buildings far beyond its actual size. It was a low day, I recall, and the sight of my first King Parrots (Alisterus scapularis) did little for my mood.  Nicole was on the phone when out of the evening cacophony emerged a beautiful song. A Blackbird (Turdus merula). I recognised it at once, but realised that I’d never really heard it until that moment, and it went straight to my heart.

Blackbirds get a bad press or, more often, no press at all. They’re tremendously common over much of their range, which has the effect of blinding people to just how stunning the jet black plumage and tangerine-orange bill of a male in top condition really are. But it’s the song that gets you. Unusually, my guru Simon Barnes, despite some polite platitudes, effectively dismisses the Blackbird’s song as muzak in his book Birdwatching with your Eyes Closed. After my epiphany in Berrima, I would naturally reject that, but in fact it precisely proves his point. I had never really listened to Blackbirds before because they’re always there in the background, and they don’t stick out like a Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) or a Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus).  

But just because Mozart is sometimes played in shopping malls, doesn’t mean it’s shopping mall music. For the alternative view it's worth hearing what Lord Grey of Falloden had to say. He, as plain old Sir Edward Grey, was British Foreign Secretary in the run-up to and during the first half of the First World War. He was also a birder and is therefore the ur-diplomat birdwatcher and another guru of mine, for obvious reasons. In the 1930s he wrote what was probably the first blockbuster bestseller about birding – The Charm of Birds, a precursor to Barnes’ How to be a Bad Birdwatcher – and here is what Grey has to say about the Blackbird and its song:

"It is not possible to explain why the blackbird's notes excel and why they mean so much to me. To me there is something in it that I can best describe as intimacy. The songs of other birds please or delight us, but that of the blackbird seems to make a direct appeal to us and stirs some inward emotion"

I think he has it. The very thing that makes the Blackbird’s song so wonderful is its homeliness and companionable quality. It is not histrionic – it is not the grand, throw-everything-to-the-wind love affair song; it’s the song of stability, of a grounded affection. Which is probably why I reacted so strongly to it in Berrima. Listen for yourself at the link below.

As Simon Barnes correctly points out, our reaction to the song says nothing about its true meaning – a cry for sex to females and a threat of violence to rival males. No, this is all about us, and our sense, and how the song has weaved itself into our lives. My own feeling is that I’ve grown into Grey’s view, that it’s a factor of age. As a boy I used to walk into the woods in Blean near Canterbury, where I grew up, to listen to the Nightingales, but I wouldn’t have walked a step for a Blackbird then, and I wouldn't have needed to. They were, and are, pretty much everywhere. I’d still walk for the Nightingales, but I’d do it for a Blackbird now too. 

No Blackbirds are singing now. Winter is coming on apace. But Blackbirds come to our tiny garden in Brussels every day, and if last winter is any guide in a couple of months’ time a male will take up shelter in the laurels at the back of the garden and start, sotto voce, limbering up for the Spring, singing his subsong as if to a private audience – Lieder, rather than opera.

But come the Spring, here in Brussels, the Blackbirds will take up voice and sing through the night. It’s not something I’ve come across anywhere else, but whether as an adaptation to street lighting, or to take advantage of the silence of the depths of night, or both, I’ve heard them sing out at two o’clock in the morning, an hour when nothing else good is happening. And each time I hear it I cheer for this background bird, this companionable charmer, whose song has perhaps been the most consistent soundtrack of my life. And now whenever anyone asks me which is my favourite bird, I have an answer.

Blackbird. 

The object of my affections. A fine, male Blackbird.
Photo courtesy of nextdoornature.org

Ankara and Rome

Some of my trips allow me ample, or at least sufficient, time for birding, as previous posts in this Blog have made clear. But they’re not all, or even mostly, like that. More typically my travel can resemble John Oliver’s gaming spoof, “World of Peacecraft” (see below).

A good example is the trip I’ve just taken to Ankara. The better part of two days on flights, with one full day spent underground in the basement meeting room of a hotel in an anonymous new development who knows how far from the historical centre of the city. In most respects I could have been anywhere in the world, or at least anywhere where you can see Magpies (Pica pica), Feral Pigeons (Columba livia var. domestica) and Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus) – the only three species of birds I managed to steal glimpses of through the windows of my hotel room.

Ankara as seen from my hotel window. The Peregrine was a fine and uplifting sight from here.

The Peregrine was exciting, of course, as they always are, but even the most hardened anti-lister would have to admit that three species is a disappointing total to see over a period of 36 hours. Despite this the trip wasn’t entirely wasted from a birding perspective. I discovered from a Latvian colleague that the call of a Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) is regarded with fearful superstition there, much as the sight of a Magpie is by the more susceptible in the UK and Ireland.

Perhaps more pertinently a colleague based in Nairobi, whom I didn’t take as a birder, was able to prove to me with photos that Spotted Eagle Owls (Bubo africanus) are breeding the gardens of our office there. No small news, this, as the species would be a LIFER for me. With his help I’ll be on the look-out for it next time I’m down there. Interestingly I’ve seen another species of owl in the gardens of the same offices – an African Wood Owl (Strix woodfordii), which was flushed by gardeners trimming the palms while I was having a coffee with a colleague a couple of years ago.

As it happens, my bird list for Turkey did increase by a small quantum on the airport run the morning after my meeting: a distant Buzzard (Buteo buteo), presumably a "Steppe Buzzard" (ssp. vulpinus), and numerous Jackdaws of the Eastern subspecies (Corvus monedula soemmerringii). It’s still not a massive list, I’m prepared to accept, but both subspecies were firsts for me this calendar year and we had wonderful views of Topkapi, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque from the air as we flew in to Istanbul, which goes to show that there’s more to flying than birds.

Now in Rome where "Italian Sparrows" (Passer domesticus italiae) frequent the courtyard of the hotel I’m staying in.

Rome: the creepers on the walls and over the gazebos are made of plastic, but that doesn't seem to bother the Sparrows

Luxembourg - Cranes

I was in Luxembourg on Monday night. This might seem like something of a non-sequitur with which to preface a Blog post about birding. Luxembourg, after all, is not noted for its bird life, or for anything else very much apart from the discreet and profitable processing of other people’s money.

Luxembourg in the daytime, from Kirchberg. A dreadful photo, but it captures the bourgeois tranquility well enough.

So it was that I came on this visit having unusually decided against bringing my binoculars with me. My boss and I decided to have a quick drink outside our hotel. It was quiet, cold and starlit. Despite its boring reputation, the city is in fact quite pretty, but our minds were on the job, and on a meeting for which we were preparing in the morning.

And then the night was full of noise – not the noise of a city, but the noise of the wild arctic; Common Cranes (Grus grus) migrating invisibly overhead, calling to each other through the darkness.

The first time I ever heard this noise was not in fact in the wild, it was in music; the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus, subtitled as a "Concerto for birds and orchestra". It's a haunting piece of soaring symphonic phrases, dissonant but melodic, with arctic birdsong, including Cranes, played on tape behind the orchestra. Below is a Youtube link so you can listen for yourself. I heard this piece for the first time on the radio while driving back with a mate after a drunken weekend at another friend’s place in the Scottish Borders –  a tiny cottage with Redstarts (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) in the garden, Dippers (Cinclus cinclus) nesting under the bridge down the road and an excellent pub in stumbling distance down the road in Kirk Yetholm.

I first saw a Crane at Otmoor in Oxfordshire around 2006 or 2007 at a point when relations with my family were strained, for a variety of reasons. But Dad and I still went birding, and for both of us this was our first Crane. Perhaps it was the maudlin atmosphere, but after a moment of delight I was suddenly struck by the fear at the time that this would be our last new bird together. It wasn’t – we’ve gone on to see our first Pallid Harrier (Circus macrourus) together in Montenegro and a host of new species for both of us at Naivasha, when Mum and Dad visited us in Kenya, and hopefully there are many more to come.

But our Oxfordshire bird didn’t make a sound, so it was years after my hearing of this bird through music that I finally heard it in the wild. Having found a route from a back road over the levees and into the riparian forest on the banks of the Danube outside Belgrade, I was pursuing early Spring passerines and woodpeckers when I disturbed a flock of Cranes using the river’s shoreline as a stopping-off point. I heard them before I saw them, and the sound made the hairs go up on my arms, but I couldn’t place it. Then they soared up and over the treetops as I gaped at them.

And now, here I was, outside a hotel in Luxembourg, and there they were, streaming overhead, over our heads, over our wine and our politics, on and on, hundreds of them in the darkness, ploughing on to the South.

My boss is not a birder. Not by a long stretch of the imagination. But he was caught up in my wonder and excitement and he grinned, and for a while we talked of things other than work, of the more important things in life – family, friends, books, food, the wild. It took a flock of birds to bring us to our senses, but then Cranes are special, as Peter Matthiessen knew when he chose them for the subject of his Birds of Heaven, in which he travelled the world trying to see all the species in the family, Gruidae.

What’s the moral of this? I suppose there are multiple ones. The first, and most obvious, is that you should never judge a book by its cover. Luxembourg may not have a reputation as a birding Mecca, but, thank goodness, there’s no such thing as a place with no birds. In short, I should have brought my binoculars. As if to rub that point in the following morning I took a short walk around the old fortifications of Kirchberg after our meeting and was greeted by a mixed flock of small woodland birds, including a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (Drybates minor) – my first of the year, as my Cranes had been.

The fortifications at Kirchberg, looking towards the Haute Ville. Learn from me and bring your binoculars.

The second point, though, follows and to an extent contradicts the first; surprise is a wonderful thing. I’m glad I didn’t expect the Cranes. They made me feel alive in a way that a bird I’d sought out never could. This was the world moving on around us as if we didn’t exist, and it’s that sort of wildness that’s particularly pleasing.

And then there’s the effect of that wildness. Hearing these birds lifted us higher, made us think of higher things, made us momentarily less selfish. To people who don’t “get” nature, that might sound absurd. But, as I mentioned, my boss is an urban creature, and he got it. He lived the moment, because I did and he enjoyed my enjoyment.

But, finally, it’s about memories. The sound of those birds brought them all back, good and bad; Luke and me on that long journey, both knowledgeable about music but both bowled over by a piece we’d never heard before (the element of surprise, again); my Otmoor Crane with Dad, quietly lifting the veil of strain between us, and then replacing it with a different, more existential one; my lonely excitement outside Belgrade, and ringing Dragan Simic to tell him about it; now this, which will surely be a central memory of my boss in this job, long after he and I have both moved on from it.

For everyone, specific foods, or drinks, or songs, or pieces of music – not to mention smells, of course – are unconscious hooks and triggers for memory. But for us birdwatchers we have birds too; the sight and sounds of different species bring back memories separate from all those others. So next time I’m asked why I birdwatch, I think in addition to all my usual answers, I think I’ll try answering this way – “Because it helps me remember my life” – and see how that goes down.

Montenegro 2 - The Longest Day

There are two days on which I try consistently each year to spend a whole day birding. The first is New Year's Day. The other, if I'm North of the Tropic of Cancer, is 21 June - Midsummer's Day. I'm not obsessive or anything and am not going to go out into a blizzard or a thunderstorm just because the calendar says so; a day or two after 1 January will do, and any day a week either side of Midsummer's day is also fine. But those are the target dates.

The challenge on 1 January is to kick off the New Year in style and ideally to see something juicily rare to set the tone for the coming twelve months. It's a sprint - an effort to cram as many species as possible into a short space of time. Midsummer is different - very different. For a start you've simply got to stay awake and alert for the whole day which, if you structure it the way I did this year, is no mean challenge and means basically setting yourself up for a 19 hour day. But the second element is more subtle. Unless you're very far north in Europe or North America, the second half of June is already becoming a challenging season for birding; many species will have toned down or entirely stopped singing; most trees are in full leaf, making species much harder to see; and then there's the potential problem of heat, which makes birds, and humans for that matter, more torpid and messes with your optics. So, if the New Year's day birdwatch is a sprint, Midsummer is a marathon.

I started my marathon on 22 June at 0300 and was out of the house by 0330. This is excessive, even by the standards of midsummer birding, but I had to drive most of the length of the Montenegrin coastline in order to be in Ulcinj at dawn. Ulcinj is home to the jewel in the crown of CZIP's conservation efforts, and its greatest ongoing success - the preservation of the Ulcinjska Salina (Ulcinj Saltworks) as a going concern with an emphasis on conservation. The Salina is vast. I've been twice now and have barely covered a third of it. Access is by appointment only, and you must take a guide with you. The access costs 5 Euro and the guide costs 20 Euro, and it's a bargain, not least because you're making an infinitesimal contribution to keeping by far the largest wetland on this stretch of the Adriatic coast available for migrating and breeding birds into the future. If you're visiting Montenegro, this is a must-visit location and my best advice is to contact the guide who showed me around, Azra Mujic, on +382 68 64 07 47. If she's not available she can put you in touch with another of the guides for the site.

The view across some of the smaller settlement ponds at Ulcinj. If you're able to magnify this photo there are nesting Collared Pratincoles in the centre of the frame. Alas I forgot to check my camera battery, and it was dead, so for the whole day I was dependent on my phone

I met Azra just after 0500 and we were inside the Salina within a few minutes. The first part of the walk inside the works was disappointing and difficult as we were walking directly into the rising sun, but as we reached the larger settlement ponds deeper inside the works I remembered why I was here; a Stone Curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus) ran furtively across one of the dried-out ponds, a Roller (Caracias garrulus - one half of around 8 pairs at the site) flew past hawking for insects, and then the first of at least 150 Collared Pratincoles (Glareola pratincola) appeared on the ground, followed by Kentish Plovers (Charadrius alexandrinus), Black-winged Stilts (Himantopus himantopus) and Little Terns (Sternula albifrons). In the distance a flock of around 200 Greater Flamingoes (Phoenicopterus roseus), and a single Dalmatian Pelican (Pelicanus crispus), squatting hugely like a boulder emerging from the water. A late, lonely Wood Sandpiper (Tringa glareola) was flushed from a drainage channel, and the stunning, black-headed, short-tailed feldegg race of Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla flava) flitted among the halophilic grasses. On a small bridge a tiny colony of Spanish Sparrows (Passer hispaniolensis) - my first in Montenegro, but my second of this trip after the unexpected and lively colony at Dubrovnik Airport in Croatia.

This photo gives a sense of the sheer size of this fantastic site. It basically stretches to the foot of the hills in the distance.

I spent around four hours here with Azra and added Bee-eaters (Merops apiaster) and a very unexpected Caspian Tern (Hydroprogne caspia) as the day wore on, but by 0930 it was time to move on. I had intended to visit Sasko Lake nearby, but a fuel crisis brought me back to Ulcinj and was followed by indecision. I had thought to stop at Petrovac and/or Buljarica, back up the coast, to look for the Eleonora's Falcons (Falco eleonorae) and Olive-tree Warblers (Hippolais olivetorum) that are reported to frequent the area, but laziness and the lure of the familiar got the better of me and I turned off towards Skadar Lake through the Sozina tunnel before reaching Petrovac.

Greater Flamingoes in flight at Ulcinj

Skadar Lake is a large, karstic, eutrophic lake lying between the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, and the sea. It's shared with Albania on the Eastern side and is renowned as a major wildfowl refuge in the winter, with tens of thousands of Coots (Fulica atra) staying there regularly, for instance. At this time of year there were a few species I hoped to see, based on past experience - Purple Heron (Ardea purpurea), Penduline Tit (Remiz pendulinus), Ferruginous Duck (Aythya nyroca), Lesser Grey Shrike (Lanius minor), Little Bittern (Ixobrychus minutus) etc. But in some respects the birds here take second place to the scenery, which is breathtaking.

The beginnings of Lake Skadar seen from the road towards Rijeka Crnovejica. Just stunning.

As a reed-fringed, eutrophic lake, it's not easy to get close to lake Skadar, and I've always found the best place is a little bit past the "Jezero" restaurant (which is also home to the information centre for Skadar Lake National Park). If you're travelling from Virpazar towards Podgorica, you pass the restaurant and the tiny village of Bistrice and then take the second turning to the right, which is a gravel road which runs along a wet reedbed, fringed with willows, and ends up on the banks of the Moraca river before it debouches into the lake.

I trundled slowly down this road adding Eastern Olivaceous Warblers (Hippolais pallida) and Golden Orioles (Oriolus oriolus) to my day list. At the end I parked the car and walked up the Moraca on the small track there, which affords views back across the reedbeds - a Purple Heron flew overhead and Whiskered Terns (Chlidonias hybrida) were, as I knew they would be, two a penny. But it was now almost midday and no birds were singing. It was hard to see anything and harder still to concentrate. This I think would be a good place to end the day, but it wasn't a good one to spend the middle of it.

I headed up the spectacular, but slow, old road to Rijeka Crnojevica and from there via Cetinje, the old royal capital of Montenegro, to Lovcen National Park. The first part of this road is winding and slow even by Montenegrin standards, but the scenery is mind-bogglingly beautiful, and there are occasional forests which are worth dipping into (again, perhaps later in the day than I had chosen to be there). I added a few common species and several Eastern Black-eared Wheatears (Oenanthe hispanica melanoleuca) during this drive, but, surprisingly, the only birds of prey were a couple of Honey Buzzards (Pernis apivorus) near the village of Cukvica and a single Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo) just outside Cetinje. Montenegro is, as for many other birds, much better for birds of prey in the Spring when there is a clear passage up the Adriatic coast of birds which apparently have crossed the straits of Otranto from Italy.

The heaving metropolis of Cetinje, the old royal capital of Montenegro. Yes, that's all of it.

Lovcen was my final spot before heading home. It's a vast limestone massif and plateau full of hidden glades and copses, and I've always thought that it should be better for birding then I've ever actually found it to be, which is probably only owing to insufficient local knowledge on my part. In any case its a stunning place to spend any part of any fine day, and a wonderful escape from the heat of the coast in the summer. I elected this time to drive most of the way towards the highest peak, which is crowned by an ugly, communist era radio and meteorological tower (a lower peak is more atmospherically topped by a mausoleum to the legendary Montenegrin king Peter II Petrovic "Njegos", who was born nearby in the village of Njegusi). The views from up here defy belief - all the way down to the knotted coastline of the Kotor/Risan Bay in one direction, and down to Skadar Lake in the other, with the distant, looming, Durmitor massif to the North-East. But there were very few birds. I'd hoped to cheat my way to a Rock Partridge (Aletoris graeca) or a Rufous-tailed Rock-Thrush (Monticola saxatilis), but no dice; a couple of Linnets (Carduelis cannabina), a lovely male Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros) and a Rock Bunting (Emberiza cia) were my only reward.

A poor photo of a great view. Looking down towards Tivat and the Lustica Peninsula from the top of Lovcen.

Or so it seemed. As time ticked by I headed back towards the old road I'd taken a few days before, which descends towards Troijica and thence down to Radanovici. Turning one of countless corners whilst still high on the mountain, I found myself looking at a huge bird of prey, hanging in the wind where the draft from the deep bay of Kotor is channeled up the rock-face. I grabbed my binoculars from the neighbouring seat; a Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), and an adult to boot, its shaggy mane visible in the lowering light. It banked right, and without a movement of its wings, disappeared out of sight behind the ridge.

In total I spent 19 hours awake and birding this day and was rewarded with 77 species of bird, 2 mammals and a single identifiable reptile species. It's not the list I had hoped for, and there were 14 species of bird I saw on this trip to Montenegro that I didn't see on this day, but it contains some wonderful birds - that Golden Eagle, for instance. If I had the chance again, I'd certainly stay in Ulcinj the night before, so that I didn't have to get up so early, and I'd probably aim to end the day at Skadar Lake and sleep somewhere near there. I'd also definitely stop at Petrovac next time - the detour is probably worthwhile and I haven't seen an Eleonora's Falcon for years, nor have I ever seen an Olive-tree Warbler. One final change I'd make? Do it with somebody else. 19 hours is a long time for any activity, let alone a solitary one.

As always, it's as interesting to note what I didn't see as what I did; no Ravens (Corvus corax), for instance, and no Blue Tits (Parus caeruleus), though both are common enough in Montenegro. Overall, as always at this time of year, it was disappointing for raptors. No doubt I should have heard/seen at least some owls, but they're a very weak spot in my birding and I'm not surprised I missed them all. I've regularly seen Ferruginous Ducks at Skadar Lake, so I was surprised not to see them. And where the hell, to reiterate my question of yesterday's blog, are all the Orphean Warblers (Sylvia hortensis)? And all the Dabchicks (Tachybaptus ruficollis), for that matter?

The full day list follows, and I'll try to add a map of the routes and locations once my older son is here to help me with the technology...

List:

1. Common Shelduck (Tadorna tadorna)
2. Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)
3. Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus)
4. Dalmatian Pelican (Pelecanus crispus)
5. Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo)
6. Pygmy Cormorant (Microcarbo pygmaeus)
7. Squacco Heron (Ardeola ralloides)
8. Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)
9. Great White Egret (Ardea alba)
10. Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea)
11. Purple Heron (Ardea purpurea)
12. Greater Flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus)
13. Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos)
14. Marsh Harrier (Circus aeruginosus)
15. Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo)
16. Honey Buzzard (Pernis apivorus)
17. Moorhen (Gallimula chloropus)
18. Coot (Fulica atra)
19. Black-winged Stilt (Himantopus himantopus)
20. Stone Curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus)
21. Collared Pratincole (Glareola pratincola)
22. Kentish Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus)
23. Wood Sandpiper (Tringa glareola)
24. Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos)
25. Redshank (Tringa totanus)
26. Whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus)
27. Black-headed Gull (Larus ridibundus)
28. Yellow-legged Gull (Larus michahellis)
29. Little Tern (Sternula albifrons)
30. Common Tern (Sterna hirundo)
31. Caspian Tern (Hydroprogne caspia) 
32. Whiskered Tern (Chlidonias hybrida)
33. Rock Dove (Columba livia) - there are apparently "pure" birds on Lovcen
34. Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocta)
35. Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur)
36. Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus)- heard only
37. Nightjar (Caprimulgus europeaus)
38. Swift (Apus apus)
39. Alpine Swift (Tachymorptis melba)
40. Hoopoe (Upupa epops)
41. Bee-eater (Merops apiaster)
42. Roller (Caracias garrulus)
43. Crested Lark (Galerida cristata)
44. Swallow (Hirundo rustica)
45. Red-rumped Swallow (Hirundo daurica)
46. House Martin (Delichon urbicum)
47. White Wagtail (Motacilla alba)
48. (Black-headed) Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla flava feldegg)
49. Robin (Erythacus rubecula) - heard only
50. Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) - heard only
51. Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros)
52. Eastern Black-eared Wheatear (Oenanthe hispanica melanoleuca)
53. Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus)
54. Blackbird (Turdus merula)
55. Whitethroat (Sylvia communis)
56. Subalpine Warbler (Sylvia cantillans)
57. Cetti's Warbler (Cettia cetti) - heard only
58. Great Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus)
59. Eastern Olivaceous Warbler (Hippolais pallida)
60. Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita) - heard only
61. Great Tit (Parus major)
62. Red-backed Shrike (Lanius collurio)
63. Magpie (Pica pica)
64. Jay (Garrulus glandarius)
65. Jackdaw (Corvus monedula)
66. Yellow-billed Chough (Pyrrhocorax graculus)
67. Hooded Crow (Corvus corone cornix)
68. Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)
69. Golden Oriole (Oriolus oriolus)
70. House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)
71. Spanish Sparrow (Passer hispaniolensis)
72. Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) - heard only
73. Linnet (Carduelis cannabina)
74. Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis)
75. Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris)
76. Corn Bunting (Miliaria calandra)
77. Rock Bunting (Emberiza cia)

Mammals:

1. Golden Jackal (Canis aureus) - one glimpsed near Ljesevici
2. Northern White-breasted Hedgehog (Erinaceus roumanicus) - one on the road near Ljesevici

Reptiles:

1. Balkan Green Lizard (Lacerta trilineata) - one on the road near Crmica

Species seen/heard on this trip but not on this day:

1. Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus)
2. Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus)
3. Green Sandpiper (Tringa ochropus)
4. Pallid Swift (Apus pallidus) - three seen between Ljesevici and Bigovo the morning after a large thunderstorm, along with many Swifts and one Alpine Swifts. These were my first Pallids for Montenegro, where, as far as I know, they do not breed.
5. Sardinian Warbler (Sylvia melanocephala)
6. Zitting Cisticola (Cisticola juncidis)
7. Wood Nuthatch (Sitta europaea) - heard only
8. Western Rock-nuthatch (Sitta neumayer)
9. Blue Rock-Thrush (Monticola solitarius)
10. Sombre Tit (Parus lugubris)
11. Raven (Corvus corax)
12. Hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes) - surprisingly common here, as it is throughout the Balkans, in my experience. On this visit seen in Bigovo and behind the walls of Kotor.
13. Cirl Bunting (Emberiza cirlus)
14. Black-headed Bunting (Emberiza melanocephala)

Not quite the end of a wearying day. I still had to wait a bit for my Nightjar.

Montenegro

I lived briefly in Bulgaria in the early 1990s. I was trying to make a name for myself and was so absorbed by politics that I didn't even bother to take my binoculars with me when I went there, an omission that seems to me now to have been bordering on insane. Like Simon Barnes, the sports and birding writer, "the idea of travelling without binoculars seems to me absurd". Or at least it does now but, what can I say? I was young and foolish. The point is that I missed almost all the birding that has made Bulgaria one of the top nature tourism destinations in Europe, and I could have been in on it from the start.

By contrast I've been visiting Montenegro since 2006, and I doubt I've been there once without binoculars. My wife is Montenegrin, and we have a house there, so there's no question at all that I'm thoroughly biased - but I'm convinced that this tiny and stunning country has as much to the offer the birder as Bulgaria or any of the other Balkan countries now setting up their stalls in the ecotourism marketplace. To give an example, although we spend only a few weeks there every year, I've seen 91 species of bird, including 12 species of raptor, in and around the village where our house is, since 2009.

Birding tours are, slowly, taking off, and, thanks to the work of Darko Saveljic and his Centre for Protection and Research of Birds of Montenegro (CZIP) there are, increasingly, facilities and information for even the casual visiting birder. Better still, and far more importantly, there are now habitats under legal protection, where wildlife tourism is promoted. But that protection is tenuous and haphazardly implemented - hunting of migratory birds is depressingly common, for instance, even in protected areas - so the more birders who come and the more the interests of local communities therefore become aligned with conservation rather than rapacious development, the better protection is likely to be afforded to these precious remaining areas.

So, as it happens, I've just come back from ten days in Montenegro - days mainly of swimming and relaxing and working on the house - but naturally with some birding thrown in, including a full day on 22 June, which I think I'll try and write about separately. There's no doubt that the summer months, even including this period of June, are not the best, bird-wise, in this part of the world. Migration season - particularly the Spring migration, and particularly April - are much better and can throw up some fantastic species; I've seen five Pallid Harriers (Circus macrourus) over my house at that time of year, for instance.

The harbour in Bigovo, from the terrace of the "Grispolis" fish restaurant. Absolutely dreadful for birding, but there are rare times when you have to say, "who cares?"

But there are still some stunners to be found, and heard, even now. I arrived at our house in the late afternoon to be greeted by a cacophony of Nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos), Sardinian Warblers (Sylvia melanocephala), Eastern Olivaceous Warblers (Hippolais pallida), Subalpine Warblers (Sylvia cantillans), Cetti's Warblers (Cettia cetti), Blackbirds (Turdus merula), Turtle Doves (Streptopelia turtur) and Cirl Buntings (Emberiza cirlus). Later in the evening they were joined by Nightjars (Caprimulgus europaeus) and often, though not on this visit, Golden Jackals (Canis aureus) howl like Wolves from the surrounding hills and Scops Owls (Otus scops) whistle mechanically from the scrub. None of these species is particularly easy to see here - the garrigue is thick, so this is a place to get to know your songs. Thanks to my newly-downloaded Collins Bird Guide App, that's easier than it used to be. It's the book, only better.

The scrubby woodland behind and around our house. Home to countless unseen warblers and chats.

On the following morning I headed to the Tivatska Solila - an old salt works near the pleasant town of Tivat now entirely abandoned in terms of the salt, but partly used as a sewage works. Much of the upper drainage of this area has been built on and this, coupled with constant disturbance by bait diggers on the seaward side, and, alas, frequent disturbance by hunters on the landward side in winter, means that the place can be hit and miss. I've had some amazing days here; a great flock of Glossy Ibises (Plegadis falcinellus) fronted by a migrating adult male Pallid Harrier; Common Cranes (Grus grus) beating their way into the face of a raging Bora (as the Tramontana wind is known here); Water Rails (Rallus aquaticus) lined up along a drainage ditch as if in a demonstration of vanishing point perspective by Alberti. But those days have mainly been in the winter and Spring. It was now, although not very hot, obviously summer and the day was definitely on the miss side as many are at this time of year; some patrolling Zitting Cisticolas (Cisticola juncidis), a few Corn Buntings (Miliaria calandra), a Pygmy Cormorant (Microcarbo pygmaeus) or two and a desultory few Great Reed Warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus). Not one to write home about.

Tivatska Solila - either heaving with birds or pretty much dead. 

As the heat set in I headed up the old road towards Njegusi on the top of the Lovcen Massif. This is one of the great drives of Europe - a series of switchbacks and hairpin bends from sea level to around 1000 metres or so up what to all intents and purposes is a largely sheer rock face. It's basically a single-track road and not for the faint of heart, but then the Montenegrin bus drivers manage to bring coaches up and down it, so maybe I just need to man-up a bit. I had headed up for the birds - Yellow-billed Choughs (Pyrrhocorax graculus) and House Martins (Delichon urbicum) that nest in a cave and zip in and out like bats - a vestige of what their nesting habits in Europe must have been like until a couple of thousand years ago - but I ended up staying for my first cevapi and kajmak of the year. These words will be meaningless to the uninitiated, but are music to the ears, and the tongues, of balkanophiles such as myself.

A thatched bothy in Lovcen National Park. It's not just the birds that should bring you here. The wild flowers are out of this world, and there's great herpetology for those with the eye for it.

Inspired by this the next day I took myself to Kotor. The city itself is stunning but tiny and can be explored and savoured in a comfortable hour, but after that, tempted as you may be by the impossibly vertiginous city walls, do not try to climb them from the inside. The secret, instead, is to take the path that begins behind the small water works just outside the walls. This is the true "Ladder of Cattaro", as it was known after the city's Venetian moniker, and again it winds all the way up to Njegusi. For much of the nineteenth century this was the only road linking the tiny independent Kingdom of Montenegro, centred on the Lovcen massif, with the coast which was then under the control of Austria-Hungary, and it was built for mule traffic. Mules are sturdy animals, of course, but not known for their enthusiasm or willingness to put themselves out. As a consequence, this track, now used only for walking, climbs the rock at a stately pace and angle. It's hard going merely because it's all uphill, but it's a good deal easier than the stairs inside the wall, it's free, and its much, much better for birding. It's a reliable place for a few Balkan specialities - Blue Rock Thrush (Monticola solitarius), Sombre Tit (Parus lugubris), Western Rock-Nuthatch (Sitta neumayer) and Eastern Black-eared Wheatear (Oenanthe hispanica melanoleuca) were all seen on this visit, for instance, and I've regularly seen Eastern Orphean Warblers (Sylvia hortensis crassirostris) in the past here too. Yellow-billed Choughs come all the way down to sea level here, particularly in the winter, but they're common enough at the level of the top of the walls even now. I've also heard reports of Rock Partridges (Alectoris graeca) from that altitude upwards, but not seen them myself. One secret of this site is to come early. It is increasingly popular with hikers - a phenomenon of the last year or two which is bound to increase, because it's freaking gorgeous - but more importantly you're shaded from the sun in the morning if you start early, and it's baking if you're too late.

The country around the ladder of Cattaro and the stunning views it affords. The old road, now a path, is visible in the foreground, and this photo gives a good indication of the comfortable angle it affords, making it a long, but easy walk up to Njegusi.

On the way back I stopped between the villages of Ljesevici and Bigovo. Last year I found a few pairs of nesting Black-headed Buntings (Emberiza melanocephala) up here, and sure enough there was at least one singing male there this time too. But neither here, nor in Bigovo, nor in Kotor - all places I saw the species last year - could I find a single Orphean Warbler. What's happened to them all?

The extensive Garrigue between Ljesevici and Bigovo. Home to the common Mediterranean species and to Black-headed Buntings.

Spring in Belgium and the Netherlands

I've been travelling a lot since my last post. Some of my trips allow time for a day added here or there for birding. That's been the case for travels I've written about already on this Blog, and it was the case when I was in America at the end of April, which I'll write about shortly. But there are other trips - and I had three during the course of last month, to Nairobi, Addis Ababa and Berlin, where you basically see nothing but the inside of hotels, Ministries and cars.

These trips have had me more away from home in Brussels than in it, and in these circumstances, where time with the family is at a premium, I've had limited scope for birding while at home. But I've been constantly aware of the passage of time - of the Spring coming and being on its way to going, and with me barely being able to stir outside Brussels to take it all in.

So it was with mixed emotions that I registered my first Common Swifts (Apus apus) on Wednesday last week (6 May), dashing over the grey rooftops of Brussels with exultant screams. The first reaction, of course, was delight:

They’ve made it again,
Which means the globe’s still working, the Creation’s
Still waking refreshed, our summer’s
Still all to come --
And here they are, here they are again

...as Ted Hughes put it, rather aptly.

But the second was deflation. Swifts are almost the last Spring migrants to reach us in North-West Europe, so if they're here it must mean that the rush is over and I've missed it almost entirely for another year.

I hadn't, of course. That's impossible if you keep your eyes and ears open; the first Chiffchaffs (Phylloscopus collybita) singing in Brussels in the third week of March; the first Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) in the garden in the first week of April. But I've seen the migration in Montenegro in the Spring - a great press of birds tumbling over each other in their frenzy to feed and move on - Pied Flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca), Wood Warblers (Phylloscopus sibilatrix), Garden Warblers (Sylvia borin), Redstarts (Phoenicurus phoenicurus), Yellow Wagtails (Motacilla flava)... the cast changing day-by-day but the numbers always defying belief, like a vast, disorganised production of Aida. I knew that wasn't going to see that sort of thing here, but I knew I was missing out nonetheless.

I did have one day's birding on the Southern Dutch coast near Antwerp on 10 April which had brought me a gorgeous summer-plumaged Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa), my first Swallows (Hirundo rustica) in Europe this year and a couple of singing Bluethroats (Luscinia svecica) - my Dad's favourite unseen bird and always good for a thrill, ever since I first saw one in the wastes of arctic Russia in 1993.

My son standing on the sea wall at the Verdronken Land van Saeftinge where I took him birding on 10 April 

But, good as that day had been, I did still feel that I'd missed the boat. So, on Saturday, I decided to see if I was right and headed to Breskens, again on the Dutch coast, and a famous minor migration choke-point where migrants following the Flemish coast northwards concentrate to cross an arm of the sea between Breskens and Vlissingen (Flushing).

I started later than I wanted, and almost gave up when I realised it would be 0830 when I actually got to Breskens, but I was blessed with fog, which effectively delayed the dawn by two hours. And, my goodness, was the trip worth it. One of those days that seems satisfying at the time, but when you come to write it up later takes on some of the aspects of legend. It started with warblers; Chiffchaffs, of course, and a Blackcap in the trees below the sea wall. But that was definitely a Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) singing. And what about the varied song containing imitation of a Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)? An Icterine Warbler (Hippolais icterina), out and proud at the top of a tree, showing off his great orange gape. And next to him, a different, softer, sweeter song? Garden Warbler. And on top of the ridge, fluttering up and parachuting down? Common Whitethroat (Sylvia communis). A Golden Oriole (Oriolus oriolus) arched between two trees. A Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) called in the distance. Overhead hundreds, probably thousands of Swallows, with a few of my first House Martins (Delichon urbicum) of the year. And over the sea terns - Common Terns (Sterna hirundo), of course, but with a few Arctic Terns (Sterna paradisaea) and even two Gull-billed Terns (Gelocheldon nilotica), rowing their way up the coast. My first for the Western Palearctic, these last, as I've only previously seen them in Africa. Then Spoonbills (Platalea leucorodia) overhead and couple of Golden Plovers (Pluvialis apricaria). A Hobby (Falco subbuteo) came and dashed around the Swallows before moving on, and a Marsh Harrier (Circus aeruginosus) beat his way northward out to sea. I left at 1130, ending the day with two Mediterranean Gulls (Larus malanocephalus) calling overhead, and, when I totted things up after I got home, I realised I'd seen and/or heard 69 species. That's no small number for this part of the world.

And another pleasure - there were other birders there; a small group from Tournai in Belgium, led by a fantastically knowledgeable chap called Jacques-Andre Leclercq, who's an expert on seabird migration. My birding tends to be solitary, and a lot of the time I like that. But part of the joy of birding is marking the passage of time, which is basically what this post is about. And to make the passage of time meaningful it needs to consist not only of personal, but also of shared experience. It's a point that one of my literary and birding heroes, Simon Barnes, makes repeatedly in his books and Blog on birding. So, though we didn't exchange numbers or anything, I've tracked Jacques down and hope we can occasionally coordinate our birding trips. I'm also hoping he can answer my question about how to access the port of Zeebrugge in the winter, which is, after all, only six months away now.