A Lesvos dawn

Rose coloured starlings

One of the stars of the fortnight, they arrive once the mulberries are ripe,often large flocks and strip the trees and move on to their breeding grounds in South East Europe, where they are quite difficult to see.

Black headed bunting.

Widespread and colourful, often heard before it is seen, perched declaring its 'patch'

Starred agama

Only when the sun was at its hottest did we see these lizards, they were quite large, and we were not sure if this one was watching us or the bee on the opposite side of the picture.

Vixen & cubs

Often seen in the early morning sunshine, suckling the cubs or watching them play fight.

White stork

These birds are happy to live alongside man, often utilising a nest on a house chimney that may have been there for many years. The first picture was taken in a hillside village standing on a telegraph post.

Little ringed plover

I parked the car in a ford and this little chap was quite happy to walk right up to the car

Black winged stilt

Impossibly long spindly legs hold up this beautiful wader, we could hear them calling from the hotel on the marshy ground opposite, the two birds in the second picture were sparring and occasionally coming close to a fight.

Orange grasshopper

If this grasshopper had not moved Les would not have spotted it, or me for that matter, it was very small and when you looked away from its position quite hard to spot again, I am going to have to buy a book on the insects of Europe as it is frustrating to have so many unidentified species.

Great white egret

A nice aerial picture, and the closest we got to one.

Scorpion

Les & I were strolling in the Potamia valley and I mentioned that we had not yet seen a scorpion, I looked around for a reasonably sized rock, pulled it over and got lucky first time.

Black stork

Normally shy in my past experience of the species (limited as it is) this bird was quite happy to parade up and down the river with people walking past.

Corn bunting

A common sound in Lesvos are the corn buntings, 'jangling' away to proclaim their territories, the crickets seen in the second birds beak were everywhere but took an almighty battering from the bird population.

Krupers nuthatch

A colourful little nuthatch of Southern Europe and a trip to Lesvos would not be complete without seeing one.

Alpine swift

With a wingspan of up to 44cms these are quite impressive especially when seemingly flying straight at you, their cries match their size.

Honeycombed rock

I only saw this one example but it was quite large, we spotted it on Makara beach whilst trying to photograph the alpine swifts that came past at regular intervals.

Glossy ibis

These can look quite dull from a distance but have superb plumage in the right light. With their feet being quite large the soft mud seemed to make them stick and they had a habit of standing on one leg and making a sort of undignified hop to release themselves.

Swallowtail

Surely Europes most beautiful butterfly, it is a shame that there are so few in England.

Clouded yellow

These are quite common but difficult to find 'landed' normally flashing past to seemingly vanish into thin air.

buttterflies

I am unsure as to the first picture but number two is a type of marbled white and I think number three is a Lattice brown. There were less species of butterfly than we expected to see but the unseasonal damp weather may have played a part in this.

Long legged buzzard

Having almost got stuck in the mud on a side track, we were just getting back to the main track when this juvenile flew in and perched about 50 yards away.