Rare migrating birds in the Alps

The Alps is not a rarity hotspot. It is not now. It will never be. That's just how it is and I have found my peace with it.

But yesterday, TWO people phoned me to tell me that there were some Ferruginous Duck (Moorenten; Aythya nyroca) down on the River Inn between the Innsbruck Airport and the village of Völs. Some of us had to work so dashing off to the river for a country tick yesterday afternoon was just not going to happen.

But I did pray for bad weather overnight (to keep them from migrating on...)

I awoke to cloud and snow - yippee!

Needless to say I was late for work, but I did get a couple of horrible photos ;-)

Male Fudge Duck showing off his white eye

The ducks are somewhere there in the background. The Innsbruck Airport is 2m behind me.

After that start, I was in a bird mood and so took the afternoon off to go birding with Paul and my father in law. We picked up two male Goosanders and a female as well as lots of wagtails hawking over the River Inn in Mils and a single Chifchaf. A search for the Great Grey Shrikes Paul had seen in the morning was fruitless, but we did pick up a flock of 49 Lapwing, 5 Golden Plover and a Common Gull (all three being Tirol ticks for me) on the fields in Thaur. We also picked up our first swallow of the spring (a Crag Martin)

Here is a photo of a Golden Plover a very very long way away. If you want to see real photos of Golden Plovers then you should visit Chris Photo Nature.

A shot of the fields in Thaur where the Lapwings, Golden Plovers and Common Gull were. This gives you an idea of the power of digiscoping because the plover shot above was taken at this same point and the birds are in the lighter brown area between the first white field and the white field behind it - way too small to make out on this photo.

Spring is in the air!

Happy birding,

Dale

Pallid Harrier in Innsbruck!

Oh yes, you read it right, a PALLID HARRIER IN INNSBRUCK!
This is a bird that has always occupied my imagination since I was a kid, but the closest I have ever come to seeing one was to pick up a Montagues Harrier near oNgoye in northeastern South Africa (also quite a find, but no Pallid Harrier).

not a great photo, but check out the pure white wings and body, and the black wedge wing tips (with a white leading edge, unlike the Hen Harrier and Montagu's Harrier)

Anyhow, the Pallid Harriers are supposed to migrate from eastern Africa and various parts of Asia, up to their breeding areas in Ukraine and further east in Asia. So why a Pallid Harrier decided to visit the still snowy Alps is something of a mystery to me.

After a morning birding at my local patch (the Inzinger Gaisau), Andreas and I headed across to Ehnbachklamm to quickly look for Wallcreeper (without luck), and then stopped in front of Martinswand (the huge cliff overlooking Innsbruck) to look for the Peregrine pair that I had seen hunting there fairly often lately.

As we soaked in the very welcome sun, we scanned the cliff for anything interesting (Eagle Owls, Wallcreeper...).
Two pairs of Eurasian Kestrel circled laxidasically.
Ooh, "what's that", cries Andreas
I only need a second's look to know that I really wanted to have my camera ready. So, I left the ID stuff to Andreas and frantically tried to find it with my digiscoping setup. But it was just one of those days when nothing photo-wise works...
So I abanoded that as a bad idea so to get a better look through the bins. Andreas got a good look through the scope. It was when it caught something that we got great view of it eating.

A little bit of video of the Pallid Harrier feeding way up high on the Martinswand. The video was taken at 150x magnification as it was sooo far (putting a lot of strain on the silly little lens that comes with the Canon A590IS I use for digiscoping).

It was perched on the cliff, eating, for a good half hour before it headed off to the West. Wolfgang and Silvia joined us the quarry (Steinbruch) in Zirl where we got great views of Alpine Swifts and Crag Martins, but no Pallid Harrier anywhere.
Idle chit chat...

And suddenly it popped up from the field right next to us, circled a few times right over us and then slowly headed back towards the main Martinswand cliff...

Happy birding,
Dale

p.s. if I get a few moments over the next couple of days, I will write a blog about the Alpine Swifts and the Rock Buntings I found this morning

Spring birds and migrating Ducks

This week has definitely been interesting for new birds.
On Tuesday, we saw about 150 Black-headed Gulls (Lachmöwem) hanging out on the Inn River near the Innsbruck Airport, and the next day, I saw my first swallows of the year - about a dozen Crag Martins (Felsenschwalben) feeding over the Inn River near the Innsbruck Altstadt.

This morning I went out to my regular birding patch (the Inzinger Gaisau). The woods were still brown and dull, the pond 80% frozen over, but the birds were loud and proud!


A quick dip down to the Inn produced three Eurasian Widgeon (Pfeifenten), hundreds of White Wagtails (Bachstelzen) and a single Grey Wagtail.

I spend some time digiscoping the various tits that were about.

Marsh Tit

Long-tailed Tit (Schwanzmeise)

Blue Tits (Blaumeisen)

Great Tit (Kohlmeise)

Eurasian Nuthatch (Kleiber)

At the back of the pond, I kept on hearing all sorts of strange sounds. A train flushed the ducks long before I had a chance to get a look at them. They circled the pond for the next 10 minutes and I got some great views of them:
Eurasian Widgeon (Pfeifenten)
Common Teal (Krickenten)
Garganey (Knäkenten) - my first record for the area



Unfortunately, wherever they eventually decided to settle was a long way from where I was. I did, however, find another group of four Common Teal in a little wooded side pond near the fishermen's cabin.

On my way home, I saw another group of 6-8 Crag Martins flying and feeding (?) over the Inn between Kematen and Zirl, and up against the stone quarry on Martinswand (Steinbruch).

Tirol is really coming alive with the sound of bird song!

Happy birding
Dale

Bird ringing in the Karwendel

As part of the Geo Tag der Artevielfalt (Biodiversity Day), we put up 11 nine metre mist nets to see what birds we could catch along the edge of the Isar River, just a few kilometers up from Scharnitz (near the Mittenwald border with Germany).


The weather was a little bit miserable (drizzled most of the day), but we did manage to get a surprising number of species. The highlight for me was my first Eurasian Wryneck (Jynx torquilla, Wendehals).



We also caught a gorgeous Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus, Gartenrotschwanz), a couple of migrating Pied Flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca, Trauerschnäpper). As an aside, there are a lot of Pied Flycatchers about at the moment - a species that I did not see the entire summer.


All the migrating swallows have also been impressive. On Saturday, we picked up Barn Swallow, Crag Martin, Sand Martin and House Martin (Rauch-, Felsen-, Ufer- und Mehlschalben).

Another highlight was to finally get to meet Martin Riesing in person. We have been working together, emailing and phoning for many months now and it was great to hang out with him. Martin is the head honcho at bird.at, Austria's top birding resource and website. The site is definately worth checking out if you are intetested in anything to do with Austrian birds and birding. You may also want to check out our forum.

Happy birding
Dale Forbes

More photos from Lago di Garda, Italy

I wanted to add a few more bird (birding and other) photos from our trip to Lago di Garda, northern Italy.
This is a shot taken one dawn from one of the beaches near Manerba dei Garda, looking towards the cliffs of La Rocca (where I did most of my birding).

Looking out over the ocean. There were a good few pairs of Yellowlegged Gulls flying about, as well as common swifts and alpine swifts, crag martins and barn swallows. Sardinian warblers were calling in the background.










Two more shots of the incredibly cute redcrested pochards that were hanging about the port at San Francisco de Garda (all taken through my binoculars).


And a reed warbler singing away in the reed bed near the point at San Biaggio. There were about 30 singing there in this tiny little reed bed. A couple of little sedge warblers were also hanging out between them, but were completely silent and tended to be lower in the reeds, feeding right near water level. But, they were also more likely to use the non-reed material for perching, i.e. the sticks and fallen branches that lay about.