This Birding Life (24 page)

Mallorca might not be the first place you'd think of when planning a birding holiday abroad – but it certainly should be. Cheap flights, a thriving tourist industry and a variety of habitats make it an ideal destination for a first trip outside the UK.

Although Mallorca is good for birds at any time of year, the peak season is definitely spring, when huge numbers of migrants cross the Mediterranean on their way north to breed. I'll be going back there with a film crew later this month, but I had a sneak preview just before Easter, when I visited the island with my 11-year-old son David who isn't a great fan of birdwatching. I knew it could be an uphill struggle, but he tagged along with a modicum of good grace, indulging me in what he considers to be a bizarre and eccentric pastime.

I bumped into one of my target species on our very first evening, as we wandered along the sea-front at Port de Pollença. A closer look at the birds on the beach revealed them to be Audouin's Gulls, one of the rarest of their family. Their blood-red bill and rather haughty stance marked them off from their commoner counterparts. Audouin's Gull has done rather well recently, but even so I didn't expect to see them pottering about in the middle of this busy resort.

The next day we visited two of Mallorca's best-known sites. We spent the morning in the Boquer Valley, where we watched a Hoopoe bringing back food to its young – proving that the breeding season here kicks off a lot earlier than back home. That evening, we strolled around the Albufereta Marsh, though unfortunately we were a week or so early for most migrants. In compensation the two resident warblers, Fan-tailed and Cetti's, competed with each other in volume, with Cetti's winning by a few decibels.

Every birding hotspot has its local expert, and Mallorca is no exception. Graham Hearl has been visiting the island for almost three
decades, and a few years ago he took the plunge and came to live here permanently. Graham's greatest service to visiting birders is his excellent
Birdwatching Guide to Mallorca
, which gives step-by-step directions to the best sites on the island.

On a fine, sunny morning, he took us up a scenic, winding road, leading into the mountains. At first, we scanned the deep blue skies without much success, but as we sat down to eat our packed lunch we had excellent views of Black Vultures, one of Europe's largest flying birds. This magnificent raptor once almost went extinct in Mallorca, but thanks to a reintroduction project there is now a healthy breeding population on the island.

We also spent a day at S'Albufera, Mallorca's premier reserve. Despite lying just outside the tourist hotspot of Alcudia, the Albufera is one of the very best wetlands in the whole of the Mediterranean. Moustached Warblers skulk deep in the reedbeds, while Kentish Plovers and Black-winged Stilts feed on every patch of mud.

My ‘target bird' here was another reintroduction, the bizarre Purple Swamphen. This giant relative of the Coot and Moorhen was a particular favourite with the Romans, who prized its tender flesh, but it died out here during the nineteenth century. Now it thrives, unharmed, in the safety of the reserve.

On our final day we headed south, to the windswept Cabo de Salinas, where we watched distant Cory's and Balearic Shearwaters gliding across the waves. Later, at nearby Cabo Blanco, I finally caught up with two elusive Mallorcan specialities. Thekla Larks were fairly easy to see as they sung from bushes and telegraph wires. Marmora's Warbler proved much harder to pin down, but we finally heard its distinctive scratchy song and caught a glimpse of this western Mediterranean endemic, a darker version of our own Dartford Warbler.

As a starter, this was great, but I can't wait to get back in a week or so to witness the wonders of spring migration. By the way, David enjoyed his trip – even if he still can't understand why his dad is so fascinated by birds.

Eleonora of Arborea was, by all accounts, a remarkable woman. Fourteenth-century Sardinia wasn't exactly a bastion of sexual equality, yet Eleonora triumphed against the odds to become ruler of the island. Even today, almost 600 years after her death, she is hailed as Sardinia's national heroine.

It's a nice story, but what does it have to do with birding in Mallorca? Only that one of the most sought-after birds on the island is a long-winged, slim and elegant bird of prey, named after the Sardinian monarch herself. And like its eponymous heroine, Eleonora's Falcon is a remarkable bird. It spends the winter months in Madagascar, and returns to islands around the Mediterranean during the last week of April or first week of May.

But unlike most migrants, it doesn't begin courtship and nesting the moment it gets back. Instead, it waits until July or even August before breeding. By this unusual evolutionary strategy the adults are able to feed their growing chicks on songbird migrants as they return south during September and October.

It wasn't until the very last day of filming in Mallorca that the
Birding with Bill Oddie
team finally managed to find Eleonora's Falcon. We were walking along the Boquer Valley, in the north of the island, when we noticed what looked like a flock of Swifts high over the hills above. A closer look revealed the unmistakable shape of hunting falcons: the Eleonora's were back!

Eleonora's Falcon isn't the only Mallorcan speciality named after a historical figure. Indeed, of the four other ‘target birds' which every visitor to the island wants to see, only one, Black Vulture, is not. After a fair amount of effort, we not only saw the other three, but captured them on video too.

The first, Audouin's Gull, was fairly easy to film, as one bird had
the habit of wandering up and down the beach opposite the Hotel Pollentia each morning. One of the world's rarest gulls, it has a peculiar, rather fastidious walk, looking down its beak at you as if questioning your right to share the same stretch of sand.

Audouin's Gull shows up the tit-for-tat nature of the way birds are often named. It was discovered in Sardinia by a French ornithologist, Monsieur Payraudeau, who named it after his colleague in Paris, Jean Victor Audouin. Perhaps Payraudeau was hoping Audouin would return the compliment, but unfortunately he failed to take the hint, and while Audouin's name is forever linked to this elegant gull, Payraudeau's is long forgotten.

In a nice historical connection, Marmora's Warbler was named after the nineteenth-century Italian ornithologist who discovered Eleonora's Falcon, Alberto della Marmora. The bird itself is a skulking little warbler which dwells in ‘garrigue', the mile after mile of thorny scrub which hugs the coast like a blanket. Like Eleonora's Falcon and Audouin's Gull, Marmora's Warbler has a very restricted range, being confined to a few scattered locations in the western Mediterranean.

The final member of the quartet lives in the garrigue too. Thekla Lark is a fairly nondescript, small, brown bird, looking like a plump, crested Skylark. However, its name conceals the most touching story of all. Thekla Brehm was the only girl in a family of seven children born to the eminent German ornithologist Christian Ludwig Brehm. Unfortunately, she died in her early twenties from heart disease, in 1857. In the meantime, her two older brothers had been on an expedition to Spain, during which they had ‘collected' a previously unknown species of lark. Her grief-stricken father named the bird after his beloved daughter, granting Thekla a little piece of immortality.

My son's
Pocket Oxford Dictionary
defines the word ‘aquatic' as ‘living in or on water'. So it may come as a surprise that there is a species of bird named Aquatic Warbler. If this conjures up an image of a little brown bird living in a swamp and wearing a snorkel and flippers, this isn't too far from the truth.

Aquatic Warbler has the unenviable distinction of being Europe's rarest migratory songbird. As a breeding species, it is confined to a narrow zone stretching from the former East Germany to the River Ob in western Siberia. At the heart of this range lies its stronghold: the wetlands of eastern Poland.