Mallorca Holiday 3rd May 2015 : Formentor and C’an Cuarassa

Mallorca Holiday 3rd May 2015 : Formentor and C’an Cuarassa

Our visitors from Palma drove up to see us and then took us up the first part of the road along the Formentor Peninsula. We stopped at the first mirador which was heaving with tourists and even had a guitar player playing along to an amplified backing track at the highest point of the Mirador – surely as big a crime against nature as it was against music !

From the viewpoint we could see Swifts below us and above We were later told that those below us were nesting Pallid Swifts (a “life tick”) and the higher up Swifts are the Common Swifts. We didn’t see any Crag Martins which was a very big disappointment. On the plus side we did see a number of Eleonora’s Falcons.

We drove almost all the way up to Albercutx Tower and then walked the last little bit. Apart from some Ravens and Yellow-legged Gulls we didn’t see much new. This was a tremendous disappointment because this is supposed to the best single site for raptor migration in Mallorca. The only consolation was that we were not the only amazed people. Even from the Mirador we could see in our binoculars that there were a few people up there with scopes so we reckoned that some real birders would be able to point out lots of birds of prey to us.

When we got there we discovered that these four people were actually ornithologists from Palma (I presumed from the University) and I got talking to one of them that spoke pretty good English. He said that he and his colleagues (who were situated around the tower so they could look in all directions) spent 60 days a year standing in that very spot (again I presumed they meant a month for the spring migration and a month for the autumn migration) so they certainly knew their stuff. They had particularly been looking for Honey Buzzards migrating and they told me that it was unheard of that none should have been sighted by the 3rd of May. Normally they would have expected dozens of sightings. Furthermore there had been almost no sightings of birds of prey on migration at all. The chap I was speaking to was saying that normally where we were standing there would be dozens of passerines in all the bushes on the mountainside and yet there were hardly any birds at all. I asked him if it has been an early migration or a late migration and he said that as far as he could understand there had been no migration at all yet and was quite bemused by it himself. He emphasised in the strongest manner how unusual – indeed unprecedented – this was. So it was just our luck that we picked this year to come for the migration !

I walked back down from the tower to meet up with the others who had been having a picnic lunch where we had parked the car. As we were packing up, the ornithologist I had been speaking to drove past. When he saw me he stopped to tell me that a Roller had been seen at Can Cuarassa. We drove back down to Port De Pollenca and since the others fancied a swim, I decided to go on the trail of the aforementioned Roller.

I didn’t manage to find it but I had a nose around anyway. I really think it was too hot for the birds and it certainly was for me at around 29 degrees. I did get another Corn Bunting which I was happy with and actually saw more Nightingales. On the way back I stopped for a quick look at the mouth of the Torrent de San Jordi and got a few more birds for the day. Back home there were, of course, the usual Swifts, Audouin’s Gulls and Shags to add to the list, all visible from the hotel window.

Click here for route taken to Albercutx Tower, Formentor Peninsular

Bird Sightings : Formentor Mirador and Albercutx Tower

Bird Sightings : C’an Cuarassa

Bird Sightings : Torrent de San Jordi