Postcard from the Île de Ré

Spent an enjoyable five days on the Île de Ré, near La Rochelle recently. Great to have big tides and a big sea for a change. The island offers good birding. I enjoyed the Category C sacred ibises (!), Mediterranean gulls, Scops owls, bluethroats and fan-tailed warblers.

More Île de Ré birding info at Nick Ransdale's website.

Black-winged stilts, it was great to be out in tidal saltmarsh habitat again. The absence of any meaningful tides in our part of Sweden meant the kids got to go rock-pooling for the first time ever too!

White-spotted bluethroat (1K male) - I have not seen enough white-spots in my life. The marshes of the Île de Ré support a healthy population of these birds.

Bank holiday blues

Nipped out early to Ripagården this morning to see what was about. Two cranes called from Gröthögarna as I got out of the car. The wood produced a few new migrants including wood warbler (1) and spotted flycatcher (2). Walking north produced four yellow wagtails and a singing thrush nightingale. Overhead my first BK swifts of the year (5). Slightly disapppointed I headed back to the car. From the carpark I could see a birder peering into a bush towards Dalen, I walked over and found him looking at a male bluethroat. Nice! Went home for breakfast determined to return to Gröthögarna with the team for a good look around.

A birder called Morten showed me this after an unproductive hour-and-a-half at Ripagården. Bluethroat number one today!

The kids managed to walk right round Gröthögarna from Dalen to Torekov during the day and we saw some good birds. Almost immediately we bumped into another superb singing bluethroat that sat up and allowed us all scope views.

Bluethroat number 2 on Gröthögarna was watched by the whole family through the scope as it sang in full view.

Other good birds seen on the walk included two excellent spotted redshanks, four wood sandpipers, another bluethroat (three in one day!) and a few spotted flycatchers. Walking back for the car, I bumped into the two cranes heard earlier in the day as they flew in to roost.

Dead fulmar

One of a pair of cranes currently using the wetlands on Gröthögarna.

Picking up the team at Torekov rev later on, I had time to look at the place quickly. Plenty of disturbance out on the rev today, but this seemed to push the birds nearer and we got great views of two turnstones and my latest-ever purple sandpiper.

A purple patch with blue bits!

My most-wanted BK bird falls at last. Finding bluethroats is always good, but this one was special.

Singing his little heart out. After six months without a patch tick, yesterday's collared flycatcher notched up the 230 and this little beauty was 231. What next?

Hard to believe that a week ago I was worried about losing my mojo. What a three day period I have had! The ninth saw me finding a marsh sandpiper off-patch, yesterday I found a great reed warbler on-patch and Mr Ekenberg found a collared flycatcher nearby and today it continued in a similar vein...

I have been boring Mrs B rigid with my master plan for this May - simply put to find a bluethroat on the patch. Ripagården-Hovs Hallar has a good track record in May for this species, so I headed there this morning pre-breakfast (ignoring the build-up of red-throated divers down the road in Laholmsbukten - they recorded 3200!). I had hardly got started when I flushed a small passerine from the vegetation along the shoreline. My brain screamed "bluethroat" and it was! A fantastic male, that started singing as I watched it. Superb. This is a tough bird in spring on the west coast of Sweden; amazingly it is about as hard as finding your own on the east coast of the UK these days. Sent an SMS to Martin and he rang for news and got to me very fast. The bird sat up on a clump of Rosa rugosa and sang lustily. Walked the rest of my route around the site, picking up 250 migrating barnacle geese, a single wood sandpiper, a hobby in-off and a fine male red-backed shrike. And so to breakfast.

With an appointment in Helsingborg, Mrs B and I headed south off-patch for the day. Before the meeting we squeezed in quiet flying visits to Sandön (90 more barnacle geese on the move and a nice hepatic morph female cuckoo) and Farhult (four spotted redshank and my first bar-tailed godwit of the year).

Gregory Peck! Hasslarp has an excellent record of turning up pectoral sandpipers in May. After three roller-coaster days the family are forcing me to change my lucky underpants, so things should quieten down tomorrow.

After the meeting we just had time for half an hour at Hasslarp. An inspired choice as within ten minutes I was looking at NW Skåne's 13th pectoral sandpiper! Superb! I spend a lot of time looking for waders and to finally find two scarce species in one week is rather excellent! The supporting cast looked good too, at least three Temminck's stints and a few wood sandpipers. What a day.

Ortolan bunting is on the top of the most-wanted list now, a few records today from around Halland and Skåne suggest this one could fall too with luck.