Cinereous buntings and little bitterns of Lesbos

This video is called Birds & Wildlife encountered on the Greek Island of Lesvos, in April/May 2015.

After the early morning of 8 May, we went to the west of Lesbos island.

Conditions are drier there, and vegetation more sparse than in the east.

Near Ypsilou monastery, an Isabelline wheatear.

A male red-footed falcon flying overhead.

A black-eared wheatear, sitting on a rock.

Then, a really rare bird, which lives just in Lesbos and Turkey: a cinereous bunting. See the photo from Lesbos here.

It sits first on a rock; later on a bush, cleaning its feathers and, later, eating.

Cinereous bunting at Petrified Forest in Lesbos

A black-headed bunting on a fence.

Many spotted flycatchers, sitting on leafless branches, flying away to catch insects, then returning.

We hear the golden oriole, both the male and the female; but, as usually, we cannot see them.

A small copper butterfly.

A Balkan wall lizard.

A rock nuthatch on, indeed, a rock.

Near the highest point of the road around the monastery, a Mediterranean praying mantis.

A singing woodlark.

A female chaffinch in a bush.

A woodchat shrike.

Bladder campion flowers.

A rock nuthatch with an insect in its bill and a male blue rockthrush, together on a rock.

A beautiful scarce swallowtail butterfly.

We go further to the west. A dead European legless lizard: roadkill.

We arrive at the petrified forest. Twenty million years ago, a volcanic eruption petrified tree trunks here. Also, fossils of deinotheriums, an early elephant species, have been discovered.

A stellion on a rock.

East of Sigri village, many bee-eaters.

A kestrel. A long-legged buzzard.

A black-headed bunting, singing in a tree.

Ruddy shelducks and yellow-legged gulls in a meadow.

A female red-backed shrike sitting on a farmer’s vehicle.

A woodchat shrike on a telephone wire.

Spreading pellitory growing at a wall.

A lesser grey shrike.

As we go back, a little owl on a roof.

A Cretzschmar’s bunting (see the photo from Lesbos here) on a wall.

A yellow wagtail.

A black-headed bunting. Sombre tits.

Bee-eaters flying and calling.

We arrive at a marsh near the river. A squacco heron. And little bitterns, both male and female. A male little bittern climbing through a shrub near the water.

This is a video of female and male little bitterns in Spain.

Cetti’s warbler warbling.

Many Persian meadow brown butterflies attracted by flowers’ nectar.

On an oleander shrub, a stonechat with an insect in its bill.

Then, another male little bittern? or a black-crowned night heron? It does not have a white breast, like an adult night heron. That makes it an immature night heron.

As a fine final note to a beautiful day, a hoopoe flying across the road.

Isabelline shrike in the Netherlands: here.