Eco Hvar

April Bird Watch, 2016

Steve Jones from Dol continues his study of the island's birds. Anyone who is seeing or hearing anything of interest in the bird world is invited to contact him at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Wheatear Wheatear Photo: Steve Jones

April 8th 2016: As no doubt most have heard, the Nightingale is singing most of the time now.

I saw another new bird for me - Corn Bunting, once again picked up by its call, as one I wasn't familiar with. It has been in for a couple of weeks but I hadn't been close enough to see it.

Corn Bunting. Photo Steve Jones

Went up to Sv Nikola earlier in the week to see what was about, and very disappointing on the bird front. A solitary Kestrel, a Wheatear and a couple of Chaffinches singing but not seen.

Sveti Nikola, the island's highest point. Photo: Vivian Grisogono
10th April 2016: Just got back from a 90 minute wander ............... heard two Cuckoos - so another arrival - and one Hoopoe calling, although saw neither.
Cuckoo, April 28th 2016. Photo: Steve Jones

Also to be added is Linnet - I thought I had been seeing/hearing them for a while, but needed more confirmation, and I managed to get my telescope on one this morning.

14th April 2016: I have been going to appointments in Jelsa all week. I was a little bit early today and went for a stroll - thought I heard Bee-Eaters, wasn't 100% but am pretty confident so you want to keep your eyes peeled. Heard a Cuckoo in Dol yesterday .... still not seen a Swift which is a surprise to me, I suspect they might be making appearances in the UK anytime now.

15th April 2016:  Just came back from Jelsa and had a definite sighting of Bee-Eaters so my hearing was good yesterday.

Bee-eaters. Photo: Steve Jones

Eco Hvar comment: I also saw the bee-eaters in a little flock above one of Jelsa's back roads a couple of days ago. They seem to have arrived right on cue, to judge by past years. Many are having to find new homes, as a large nesting place just opposite the Bagi petrol station on the main road was dug up a couple of years ago, exposing their warren of nesting holes as pitiful relics of the past.

Bee-eaters nesting holes exposed to predators and the elements, April 2015. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

Bee-eaters' nesting holes ruthlessly exposed to predators and the elements, April 2015. Photo: Vivian Grisogono 

21st April 2016: As I barely visit a town for any period of time I am still not hearing/seeing any Swifts. Are they in in Jelsa now? I was in Split yesterday and they are everywhere, I thought I heard one in Stari Grad this morning, maybe they are just arriving. Interesting, as they would only be arriving just about now in UK, For some reason I assumed things would be earlier here.

Eco Hvar comment: Yes, the swifts have arrived in Jelsa, and just today they were extremely busy renovating their nesting places under the eaves of the buildings on the main square. A diligent and co-operative crowd!

Swifts preparing their nests on Jelsa's square, 21st April 2016. Photo Vivian Grisogono

22nd April 2016. Picked up the Nightjar "churring" last night so another recent arrival.

23rd April 2016. Another long awaited  .................. Vuga/Golden Oriole I hear calling this morning and it certainly wasn't yesterday.

Sunday 24th April.2016: Went out for 90 mins or so early this morning, wondering if the low cloud, mist and rain would have any influence on things. It was very quiet, even the singing had gone quiet apart from the dawn chorus - who can blame them?

Keep hearing Cuckoo, but long distances away and not lucky enough to have seen one here. I still wonder what their host bird would be if they breed.

Anyway, as I was driving along the airport road I chanced upon a Woodchat Shrike, all over in a few seconds. I had seen one here on Hvar a couple of years ago on holiday albeit elsewhere on the island.

Woodchat shrike (c.2013). Photo: Steve Jones

Also saw a good number of Swifts in Stari Grad - so interestingly it wouldn’t be much different to UK arrivals.

Eco Hvar: Saturday and Sunday, 23rd and 24th April 2016 have been very rainy, with some thunder and a lot of low-lying clouds. The birds seem to lie low during the heaviest rains, and then emerge in full song as soon as calm is restored. It's quite a contrast to the previous period of hot sunny weather, but welcome refreshment for gardens and fields - also for dust-covered cars.

Rain clouds hanging heavy over Pitve Church. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

© Steve Jones 2016

For more of Steve's beautiful nature pictures, see his personal pages: Bird Pictures on Hvar 2017, and Butterflies of Hvar 

Related items

back to top
You are here: Home Nature Watch April Bird Watch, 2016

Eco Environment News feeds

  • Life and death on India’s toxic trash mountains – video

    Towering above Delhi’s skyline, emitting an inescapable stench of rotting flesh, are giant mountains of rubbish. Several miles wide and more than 200ft (60 metres) high, they are visible from across the city and stand as symbols of Delhi’s inability to deal with its trash.

    Hannah Ellis-Petersen visited communities living in the shadow of Bhalswa’s overfilled landfill heaps, to see how they have become reliant on the mountain that is simultaneously poisoning them

    Continue reading...

  • Is that a goose on your head? Earth’s most spectacular inhabitants – in pictures

    From sharks to rays, from island cliffs to the tribes of Africa’s Omo Valley, Cristina Mittermeier’s show A Greater Wisdom celebrates the beauty of our planet – and highlights the biggest threats it faces

    Continue reading...

  • Third of British farmers made no profit in past year, report finds

    Only 14% of farmers surveyed for Farmdex report had 10% or more profit margin amid drop in subsidies since Brexit

    A third of British farmers are making a loss or breaking even as they struggle with the loss of subsidies and looming inheritance tax changes, a report on post-Brexit farming has found.

    Only 14% of farmers surveyed for McCain Foods’ inaugural Farmdex report said they made 10% or more profit in the past year. In fact, many are making no profit at all, with 35% of the farmers reporting making a loss or breaking even.

    Continue reading...

  • Ofwat letting water firms charge twice to tackle sewage, court to hear

    River Action bringing legal action against water regulator over who should foot bill for firms’ past failures to invest

    Ofwat is unlawfully allowing water companies to charge customers twice to fund more than £100bn of investment to reduce sewage pollution, campaigners will allege in court on Tuesday.

    Lawyers for River Action say the bill increases being allowed by Ofwat – which amount to an average of £123 a year per household – mean customers will be paying again for improvements to achieve environmental compliance that should have been funded from their previous bills.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘We must change course’: a stark climate warning from the UN chief – podcast

    As global leaders and environmental activists descend on Brazil for next week’s Cop30 climate summit, Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s global environment editor, Jon Watts, who recently sat down for an exclusive interview with the UN secretary general, António Guterres. As he approaches his final summit as the UN chief, Guterres reflected on humanity’s progress in attempting to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, why Indigenous voices must be listened to and how he remains positive in the face of the climate crisis

    ‘Change course now’: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head

    Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: Pearls of the ocean that might just return to British shores | Mark Cocker

    Holkham, Norfolk: A local company is attempting to revive not just European flat oysters, but a whole wealth of species on a nearby seabed

    It sits on my desk as I write, a memento from our Norfolk visit, where I found it at the tide’s edge. This blue-and-ochre shell comprises 30 or more fine layers of wavy calcium, rising to a swollen weathered apex. You could imagine the original bivalve sitting in your palm as an intact and living whole. But for that thought experiment to be true, I’d have to be more than 100 years old. Because this European flat oyster is a relic of a lost Victorian ecosystem.

    The colony that gave rise to my shell had probably existed here for thousands of years, until the dredgers got to work, as they have on 90% of wild oyster reefs worldwide, and smashed it apart, then took the lot. Native oysters are functionally extinct here, as they are around most British coastlines.

    Continue reading...

  • Only 3% of international climate aid going to transitioning communities: ‘This is absurd’

    New report on funding to slash carbon emissions finds startlingly low engagement with the people affected

    Less than 3% of international aid to slash carbon emissions is supporting a “just transition” for workers and communities away from polluting industries, according to a new report.

    Released one week before the start of major United Nations climate negotiations in Belém, Brazil, the analysis from the climate and development non-profit ActionAid warns that the world’s response to the climate crisis risks deepening inequality rather than addressing it.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘How did we get here?’: documentary explores how Republicans changed course on the climate

    In The White House Effect, now available on Netflix, archival footage is used to show how the US right moved from believing to disputing the climate crisis

    In 1988, the United States entered into its worst drought since the Dust Bowl. Crops withered in fields nationwide, part of an estimated $60bn in damage ($160bn in 2025). Dust storms swept the midwest and northern Great Plains. Cities instituted water restrictions. That summer, unrelentingly hot temperatures killed between 5,000 and 10,000 people, and Yellowstone national park suffered the worst wildfire in its history.

    Amid the disaster, George HW Bush, then Ronald Reagan’s vice-president, met with farmers in Michigan reeling from crop losses. Bush, the Republican candidate for president, consoled them: if elected, he would be the environmental president. He acknowledged the reality of intensifying heatwaves – the “greenhouse effect”, to use the scientific parlance of the day – with blunt clarity: the burning of fossil fuels contributed excess carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, leading to global warming. But though the scale of the problem could seem “impossible”, he assured the farmers that “those who think we’re powerless to do anything about this greenhouse effect are forgetting about the White House Effect” – the impact of sound environmental policy for the leading consumer of fossil fuels. Curbing emissions, he said, was “the common agenda of the future.”

    Continue reading...

  • The ground is swallowing homes in this Native village in Alaska. Residents have no choice but to move

    The climate crisis is causing the permafrost to melt in Alaska, forcing the village of Nunapitchuk to relocate

    Children splash gleefully in the river as adults cast fishing lines or head into the Alaska tundra to hunt. It’s a scene that has characterized summer days for centuries among the Yup’ik people who have long lived in south-western Alaska, where the village of Nunapitchuk stands. But, with temperatures in Alaska warming nearly four times faster than most parts of the globe, that way of life is about to change.

    Homes in Nunapitchuk have been sinking into the permafrost, and residents have decided their only choice is to move the entire village to higher ground.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘We’ve planted the apple that fell on Newton’s head’: the artists striking back against the climate emergency

    From cultivating a spiral-shaped orchard to finding lost glaciers and dressing up as a landmark bird, on 4 November artists around the UK will participate in Remember Nature, a day of activism to offer hope for the future

    Back in 2015, well into the twilight of his life, the artist and activist Gustav Metzger decided to embark on one last big project. Best known as the inventor of auto-destructive art – a response, he said, to the destructive horrors of the Holocaust – Metzger had also, over the course of a long career, been an inspirational teacher to Pete Townshend of the Who and campaigned for numerous causes including nuclear disarmament and vegetarianism. Now, on a video message barely three minutes long, he was making one final plea.

    “I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your participation in this worldwide call for a day of action to remember nature on November 4th, 2015,” he began, appealing to creatives to take a stand against the ongoing erasure of species. “Our task is to remind people of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so art will enter territories that are inherently creative.”

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

Copyright © 2025 Eco Hvar. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Orion Informatika.