Karpasia

Audouins's gulls, Kleides Isles, Cyprus, 30/5/15

Whilst my main role in Cyprus has been to collect field data relating to breeding and migrating birds, I have also been working on a project of my own. This investigates the hypothesis that the further I actually I am from home, the more successful Arsenal are. After assessing two years of data now, the correlation is a positive one. On cup final day last year I was attempting to find phone reception on a hilltop in the Outer Hebrides when we finally wore Hull down. This year, c2400 miles to the South East, in another distant corner of Europe, I found myself counting cattle egrets on a lake somewhere on the outskirts of Famagusta as the players ran out at Wembley. The greater distance involved clearly worked in our favour as we won 4-0. There may be some other variables to consider but a spring trip to Mongolia next year might just see us win the league.

So despite kind efforts I missed the cup final again this year. Instead I settled for a cold Efes, a Turkish TV drama and the sound of cicadas as I headed into North Cyprus with a few others to conduct the annual count of seabirds on the remote Kleides Islands at the very tip of the Karpas peninsula - the ‘pan handle’ of Cyprus.

En route we checked an area of seasonal wetlands on the edge of Famagusta’s ugly sprawl to find the spectacular cattle egret colony in full swing. Emerging from the murky water, bare, skeletal tamarisks sagged under the weight of nests, their spiky, feathered contents spilling this way and that. I counted a good number of chicks, some mere balls of fluff buried under similarly fluffy siblings, others clambering awkwardly in pursuit of newly returned adults. I watched one feeding its young and winced at the eager pulling and smacking of their bills clamped against the adults'.

Reckless coastal developments render the road to the Karpas forgettable until it veers in land and the undulating Mediterranean landscape of farms and villages reappears. It was a relief to leave the coastal strip behind, the unappealing holiday villages, the empty shops and scruffy parking lots. It's hard to fathom the process, or lack of, that continues to result in places like this. Worse still are its infections into the Mesoaria plain, the sweeping arable 'basket' of the North...the sight of an abandoned shopping mall next to the shell of a 15-storey hotel, surrounded by fields of wheat, is the most ludicrous of all.

Karpasia

A Calandra Lark in flight, a wonderful bird

But further east, through Karpasia and past the last village, things improve. Pockets of wheat, fringed with the spiky purple heads of donkey thistles fill the narrow valleys, while small stone huts seemingly as old as the hills lie scattered between them. Old shepherd's huts I assumed, but in fact they were drying sheds for the tobacco that was once grown here. Over one such field we marvelled at the sight of six eleonora’s and two red-footed falcons dismantling insects on the wing.

The Kleides Isles are inhabited only by seabirds and inaccessible from the mainland so a fisherman kindly took us out in order to complete our surveys. Most important among these is the small breeding population of Audouin’s gulls (the most easterly in Europe?) and Mediterranean desmaresti shags. Both are typically outnumbered by Yellow-legged gulls and on our visit so it proved. Thankfully the audouins remained largely stationary as I checked numbers from the lurching boat. Aside from the gulls and shags we also spotted several little egrets, a peregrine and a flock of swifts wheeling around one of the many caves. The strangest sighting of all though was found on the very last rock, the most easterly tip of Cyprus...a roosting Spoonbill, perhaps contemplating the final leap across the sea to the wetlands of Turkey or beyond.

The end