Volunteering at Antikythira

Early this morning the wind was still strong, but the day was bright, the air clear, and we climbed the hill with the hope of some nice spotting. And so we spotted, in the afternoon, a Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) juvenile, mobbed by several Eleonora’s Falcons. The first hours passed with no birds. Few minutes after […]

The ringing activity is starting tomorrow and Eli and the volunteers, with the new entry Angie, have been busy setting the mistnets. I, Giacomo, have been charmed by the island last year and I’m here again to count the raptors. If only the wind lets me! Today it’s been very wind, as well, with gusts […]

The wind decided to be stronger than ever and we had to stop the raptor count even though we did not see any raptor. We stopped for some hours and in the afternoon we went up again with the wind just below sixty kilometers per hour but only our friendly kestrel dared to fly today.

Continuing the routine of the previous days, today we had the record of wind! We put some stones in our pockets to hold on in our places; despite the wind, we had some observations in the afternoon. As we spent so much time in the observation point, and luck is not with us, one male […]

As the previous days we are still unlucky; the wind was strong all the day and we did not see any bird flying during the morning. The afternoon we had two observation and we hope that tomorrow our luck will change. Species Count Black Kite 1 Honey Buzzard  1 Total 2        

It was a frustrating day; we did not observe any bird during the morning and in the afternoon we had only three observations. Besides the poor number we could contemplate a flock of Eleonora’s Falcon hunting close to the observation point and hearing swift passing by. Species Count Buteo Buteo 1 Eurasian Sparrowhawk 1 Marsh […]

After a promising start with two different flock of Honey Buzzards and Black Kite, the things calmed down and the wind change direction from north east to North West, so we had only two birds in the afternoon. From the blog, I have to thanks the work of the volunteers it would have been impossible. […]

Today was a very slow day, we did not see any flock and the birds were passing one by one and in a very long space of time. We were scanning the sky all day long but it was not our day. The wind was not so strong as yesterday but still was unpleasant. Species […]

We had a good migration in the morning, several flocks of Honey buzzards passed through the island and this time we managed to take some good photos. The afternoon  was a completely different story, the wind was blowing from the west and reach the fifty kilometers per hour, it was very hard for us to keep […]

The wind calmed down a bit today and it was a better day for the raptor migration. Three differents flocks with more than thirty individual were spotted today but they were far away and could not be  photographed; it is the first day  with more than a hundred raptors counted. Species Count Black Kite 3 […]