Mallorca trip overview
As you may have seen, I spent that last week on a birding holiday in Mallorca with my mum. Now back in the UK, I have taken some time to make a total list of species seen, as well as checking how many target species we managed to spot.
We stayed at PortBlue Club Pollentia, which not only had excellent food, but was also situated perfectly right beside the Albufereta marsh. There was a hide on the hotel grounds and a viewing platform by the car park, where I saw some fab birds including Short-eared Owl, Peregrine, Garganey and Greenshank. The hotel was in walking distance from Can Cuarassa and Sa Barcassa, and there were cheap and easy buses up and down the coast. These could get you to a number of sites, such as La Gola, the Boquer Valley and S'Albufera. If you are planning a birding trip to Mallorca I can't recommend using the public transport enough - we only hired a car for one day to travel to Cuber Reservoir, which was done easily through the hotel.
We also had guides for one full day and one half day - if you are planning to use a bird guide on the island I would definitely recommend using Mallorca Natural Tours. Also, we found that the Mallorca Birdwatching website was a fab resource for finding site information.
In total in our week we managed to see 102 bird species, of which 37 were new for me. The list is as follows, with new species highlighted green and target species in bold:
Shelduck
Mallard
Gadwall
Shoveler
Marbled Duck
Teal
Garganey
Pochard
Red-crested Pochard
Red-legged Partridge
Pheasant
Little Grebe
Great Crested Grebe
Cormorant
Black-crowned Night Heron
Cattle Egret
Little Egret
Grey Heron
Purple Heron
Glossy Ibis
Greater Flamingo
Griffon Vulture
Black Vulture
Osprey
Booted Eagle
Red Kite
Marsh Harrier
Kestrel
Peregrine
Water Rail
Moorhen
Coot
Red-knobbed Coot
Purple Swamphen
Avocet
Black-winged Stilt
Stone Curlew
Collared Pratincole
Little Ringed Plover
Kentish Plover
Grey Plover
Curlew Sandpiper
Temminck's Stint
Little Stint
Wood Sandpiper
Green Sandpiper
Common Sandpiper
Redshank
Spotted Redshank
Greenshank
Curlew
Whimbrel
Snipe
Ruff
Black-headed Gull
Mediterranean Gull
Yellow-legged Gull
Audouin's Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Common Tern
Black Tern
Whiskered Tern
Feral Pigeon
Woodpigeon
Collared Dove
Short-eared Owl
Swift
Hoopoe
Thekla Lark
Sand Martin
Crag Martin
Barn Swallow
House Martin
Water Pipit
White Wagtail
Iberian' Yellow Wagtail
Nightingale
Redstart
Whinchat
Stonechat
Blackbird
Blue Rock Thrush
Sardinian Warbler
Balearic Warbler
Zitting Cisticola
Cetti's Warbler
Willow Warbler
Chiffchaff
Firecrest
Pied Flycatcher
Great Tit
Blue Tit
Balearic' Woodchat Shrike
Raven
House Sparrow
Chaffinch
Linnet
Goldfinch
Greenfinch
Serin
Cirl Bunting
Corn Bunting
Of my 25 target species, I managed to see 18 - much more than I had expected! Here are some of my highlights in pictures:
From top to bottom, left to right:
Whiskered Tern (Albufera), Temminck's Stint (Albufera), Little Stint (Albufera), Booted Eagle (Sa Barcassa), Collared Pratincole (Albufera), Spotted Redshank (Albufera), Curlew Sandpipers (Can Cuarassa)
From top to bottom, left to right:
'Balearic' Woodchat Shrike (Can Cuarassa), Redstart (Can Cuarassa), Cirl Bunting (Cuber Reservoir), Balearic Warbler (Boquer Valley), Greater Flamingoes (S'Albufereta), Marbled Ducks (Albufera), Black-crowned Night Heron (Albufera)
I also had some close encounters throughout the week. My personal favourite would be the Firecrests at Lluc - it was amazing seeing this male (centre) preening just metres in front of us. The other images are of a Cattle Egret at Albufera (left) and Black-winged Stilt at Sa Barcassa (right).
Overall, it was a great week on an amazing island. The variety of birds was amazing, and it was great to see so many new species. I would thoroughly recommend visiting if you haven't already.
You can see my daily blogs from the trip here.
Thanks for reading!
