Azorean Chaffinch

While waiting for the first spring vagrants and just some winter visiters left I entertain myself whit the local birds. One of 12 sub especies wich atracked more atention to visting birders from the European mainland is our Chaffinch. Plumage and call are totaly different from the mainlanders.

Simple day on the patch whit a lesser Scaup

Today I just left home to pick up my GerbyBirding van from the mecanic and decide to have a fast look on a pond near by. Some Malards and Common teals, 2 Tuffed Ducks, 1 Gadwall and a Scaup.
After publishing the Scaup on Facebook some waked up birders alert me about the last one.
 Lesser Scaup.Lucky me.
On the Azores I should know better. Always check Little Egrets for Snowy,Snipes for Wilson and Whimbrels for Hudsonian.

Driving back home stil some fun whit the Cattles. 

Corvo. Great Blue and Night Heron, Blue winged Teal and Bar tailed Godwit

Like all Azores birders my hart was banging faster whit the idear of flying to Corvo. Not the best time of the year but stil good changes to find some nice birds. Even whithout birds Corvo is a great Island to go. Nice landscape and great people.

It never happened to me before but while the plane was coming in from the west I thought that I could see from my seat a Geat Blue Heron standing on the rocks in front of the beach. A quick lunch on the village before I run around the airfield and in a forgotten corner the bird was indeed standing there. Lucky for me it was a  verry relaxed bird and I could aproach easely.

 

A quite walk by the lower fields did not bring anything new and I was preparing to go to the Hotel but a nice suprise was just flying over me. Black crowned Night Heron to fast to picture. Whit a fast beating hart I searched on old Harbour and there it was siting in the last sunlight of the day.

Two hard days of work on the foggy and rainy Caldeirao did not make birding easy and only some Mallards and a Blue winged teal was the poor result. A complete day spended on the eastern Valleys also did not bring anything so I thought this should be the end. Next morning I still had a look on the fields up of the village where Kathy and Renee had seen the 2 Comon Cranes but no birds there.

Time to check in but still time for a quick look behind the windmills. Between a dozen of Turnstones I still had a Bar tailed Godwit waiting for me. All by all a nice trip to Corvo

Santa Maria whit Belted Kingfisher, Great Egret and Pink-footed Goose

 

 

 

 

Januarie means traveling between the Islands to prepare the walking trails for the coming season. As Corvo, whit 2 new trails, did not alow us go there because weather condition I choose Santa Maria as first destination.

The weather was terrible and after working on the first day we got stocked in town whit a broken carr and heavy rainfall. I decide to have a try on the harbour and during 10 minutes whithout rain I could get a louzy record pic on 1600 ISO from the extemly nervous Kingfisher discoverd by Alan Vittery earlyer this winter.

 

 

 

 

Happy whit the finding of a new Azores especie I tryed next day to get a better picture but the Kingfisher was hiding out in the bambu. While watching to a Spotted sandpiper 2 Little and one Great Egret flyed over and stopped on a distante rock. In 2008 I found a Great Egret and a Common  Kingfisher on this spot. Both first for the Azores. Great Egret is far most rare than the Geat American Egret.

 

 

 

 

 

Next day I dropped my friends Telmo Pacheco and Rodrigo Borba on the beginning of the Pico Alto trail and before starting to work on another trail in Santa Barbara I passed by a field north of the airport to try get a picture of two Pink footed Goose wich I have seen flying up on big distance the day before. It was hard to aproach behind the stone walls in the mud but I cam close enough to get a reasonable record shot. Together whit the 4 Dotterels, 1 Lesser Yellow legg and a Bar tailed Godwitt it was not a bad trip at all.

 

Fall out of Cattle Egrets on the Azores

Most years we do not have over half a dozen of Cattle Egrets on the Azores. After the big flocks of american waders in Autum we got a big invasian of Cattle Egrets in the beginning of this winter. Some flocks have been seen in several Islands and probably the biggest until now showed up in the harbour from Ponta Delgada this morning when I was searching for some northern Gulls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glossy Ibis

Godwits, Kentish plovers,Lesser Yellow legg, Shelduck and a Peregrin Falcon on Cabo da Praia