Before our relatives arrive we wanted to do some birding and Mandria Beach is one of the top locations for birding in Cyprus. We are a bit late for the migration but we hope to see at least some of the Cyprus specials who knows. Finding the beach is easy as we already preplanned the route but otherwise it would have been quite difficult as it is not signed. Before reaching it we stop to look for birds on the fields with little luck, there are only sparrows and crested larks.
The beach is at the end of the paved road near a bar. The beach is empty but the bar is surprisingly open, there are only two more cars here and the people are walking far away on dirt roads not sitting at the bar.
We stop a bit to walk the beach. Surprisingly it is quite stony and not sandy and we are not sure how much fun it would be to go in the water here or stay on the shore and sunbath.
We then continue along the shore, slowly, and the dirt road is good enough to proceed to the next paved road. All wild areas are full of beautiful flowers and we really enjoy looking at them and looking for butterflies and damselflies that might land on them.
But the majority of the fields here are planted fields, with different types of grain. And this is where we expect to see larks but the only ones that we see are crested larks which are really everywhere here.
The fields are mesmerizing with their yellow colors and uniform grains swaying in the wind. We enjoy looking at them while pausing from our search for larks, it is something that we do not see often in Arizona.
We decide to walk also a bit through the wild fields to enjoy the flowers and maybe flush a few interesting birds. The flowers and the road and beautiful but there are no new birds unfortunately.
Except…the big metallic birds flying right overhead. There are many of them and quite low as the airport is over a ridge just to the west. It is a surprisingly good place for plane spotters, we see quite a few during the hour we are searching for birds in the area.
But wait – as we go to the restroom in a small campground near the shore already desensitized by the many larks we see a sparrow that looks slightly different. We look more carefully and the whole palm tree is full of Spanish Sparrows, finally something new and special for us! Happy we return to the car and on we go to the next site on our very busy plan for the day.
