September is the main month for Honey Buzzard passage, with juvenile birds arriving at Sagres. The strong winds yesterday meant the young raptors rested overnight in the woods surrounding Cabranosa. A short walk around my locality saw two Honey Buzzards, already in the air at 7-45 a.m. I came across a familiar pale Booted Eagle down a nearby lane. This was an excellent sighting as the eagle perched for a short time, before hunting the nearby fields again. Few small birds were around first thing, a female Blue Rock Thrush on a low building roof was singing intermittently. As I've probably mentioned before, I no longer need to scour cliff faces for Blue Rock Thrush. With ongoing coastal development, the birds have adopted these new habitats as suitable lookout points and are commonly found on building roofs. Back to the Honey Buzzards and this morning, there were excellent examples of the three main juvenile forms - light, medium and dark plumage variations. The Booted Eagle below was among twenty or so seen, with three dark form birds. Four Sparrowhawks were in the air and a Short-toed Eagle turned up around midday.
Alan Cripps
29/9/2019 05:39:50 pm
Great photos Nigel Comments are closed.
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