Cinereous Bunting.
29th May 2022
Another bird which is a ‘Must’ on Lesvos is Cinereous Bunting. This bird lives a world away from the forest dwelling Kruper’s Nuthatch on the harsh rocky slopes on the west of the island. As you travel west from the village of Mesotopos the island gets increasingly barren and mountainous and life is obviously hard. To say people farm the land is stretching it, it’s more a case of scratching a living keeping a few sheep and goats. The land is far too rocky to take the blade of a plough or any other machinery.
It’s a window into how the island must have been long ago – tough doesn’t really come close to describing it. These rocky slopes are baked by the sun all day long and the rocks act like radiators storing the sun’s heat making it a very inhospitable landscape. This is the realm of birds like Cretzschmar’s and the above mentioned Cinereous bunting. Most people make the trip west to Ipsilou monastery which sits atop a high rocky hill to see these birds and they are indeed virtually guaranteed to see them there. It’s a bit of a pilgrimage for some, without the obvious religious connotations. However, we have been visiting a site that is just as certain as Ipsilou for these birds and is much nearer. At this place we have never failed to see these lovely birds and this time was no exception. They flew around the rocks virtually in front of us putting on a great show once again.
It’s a window into how the island must have been long ago – tough doesn’t really come close to describing it. These rocky slopes are baked by the sun all day long and the rocks act like radiators storing the sun’s heat making it a very inhospitable landscape. This is the realm of birds like Cretzschmar’s and the above mentioned Cinereous bunting. Most people make the trip west to Ipsilou monastery which sits atop a high rocky hill to see these birds and they are indeed virtually guaranteed to see them there. It’s a bit of a pilgrimage for some, without the obvious religious connotations. However, we have been visiting a site that is just as certain as Ipsilou for these birds and is much nearer. At this place we have never failed to see these lovely birds and this time was no exception. They flew around the rocks virtually in front of us putting on a great show once again.