Corsica Trip Report

(8/5/2005 – 15/5/2005)

Peter Jones

Introduction:

This was a family holiday, with only a couple of mornings dedicated to birdwatching. From a birdwatching perspective, Corsica was chosen in the hope of seeing the endemic species occurring on this island. We were fortunate in that the area were we stayed was fairly rural with an abundance of commoner Meditteranean wildlife in the vicinity. Weather was fine throughout

Click here for Photo gallery from Corsica

General information:

Flight: British Airways from Gatwick to Bastia was fairly reasonably priced and a good service.

Car Hire: The best deal we could find was a Renault Clio Diesel with Europcar at Bastia Airport..

Accommodation: We stayed at La Vallicella. A fairly basic apartment complex on the North East coast near Moriana plage. We chose this place for its advertised child-friendliness, which was largely accurate with a few notable exceptions (e.g. a jagged iron door stop protruding from the floor which we had to cover with a chair for the entire week).

The complex had a nice restaurant, beach and pool. It was also in a nice area with plenty of commoner Meditteranean species of wildlife in the vicinity.

Getting by in Corsica: We found the Corsican people very helpful and friendly. English was not widely spoken.

Driving was fairly difficult, with locals fond of tail-gating and kamikaze overtaking manoeuvres. However, roads were fairly quiet so it was usually fairly easy to let the locals past and enjoy a more relaxed pace!

Sunday afternoon we had problems getting food as everywhere was closed, with locals looking at us as if we were from a different planet when asking for food. Fortunately, we found a cafe/bakers open, and stocked up. Apart form the general siesta type lull of activity in the afternoons, we were able to find most things fairly easily.

The one tourist attraction we found on the island (a tortoise sanctuary!) was not yet open, as May is very early in the tourist season for this island.

Highlights

The two mornings dedicated to birdwatching, I hoped to find the two endemic species on the island (Corsican Nuthatch and Corsican Citril Finch) plus Marmora's Warbler which I had also never previously seen. I also hoped to see the Balearic race of Woodchat Shrike but surprisingly, we didn't see a single shrike throughout the week!

We also didn't spend anytime seawatching mainly due to time restrictions and a failure to get to any suitable headlands.

Corsican Nuthatch and Corsican Citril Finch: After reading trip reports, the nearest area for these species was Haut Asco. I noted the area in which the elevation exceeded 1000m for the Nuthatch, and headed there early one morning. Corsican Citril Finch was easily seen en route to Haut Asco from the road, a flock of 10 or so birds, plus a couple of pairs.

Haut Asco was eventually reached after a long winding mountain road, GPS was very useful around the surprisingly confusing junction at Asco village.

Weather was poor at Haut Asco, and it was also difficult to get into the right habitat for the Nuthatch. The track which forms the continuation of the road (running uphill parallel to the stream) eventually gets you into pines, and others have seen Nuthatches here, but I failed to see or hear any evidence, and was beaten back by the weather. I returned to the car park area and after unsuccessfully checking the pines around the car park wandered up a track over the bridge across the stream which led to a couple of chalets. Again the pines were fairly extensive, but required a heavy trek up a steep hill to get into the heart of the habitat. Fortunately, I happened across a Nuthatch in this area, and enjoyed brief but excellent views.

Returning from Haut Asco in the car, it is worth stopping frequently and checking, as I saw another bird about 1km metres down from the car park. Given more time, and better weather, it would have been interesting to see how common the Corsican Nuthatch actually is in this area.

Marmora's Warbler: I had hoped that bird would be fairly easy to encounter, but found it incredibly difficult to find the low maquis habitat that this species prefers. Indeed the North East coast area had no suitable habitat that I could find.

An afternoon trip round Cap Corse was also unsuccessful, with most likely looking habitat being too high on closer inspection (and therefore more suited to Dartford Warbler), or inaccessible from the roads (mainly due to inability to park).

However, on my second dedicated morning birdwatching, I ventured to St Florent, and eventually found a suitable area of hillside with heather-like, knee high vegetation, and a suitable place to park up. After a couple of minutes scrambling up the hill side I was aware of the Marmora's Warbler alarm calls, and had good views of a pair of birds.

Other Highlights:

Biguglia looked like it had huge potential, but my brief stop there was fairly unsuccessful, I couldn't see any areas were there was a good number of water birds, or good places to view the area from.

The area round our accommodation consisted of a few gardens, fields, and woodland. There were plenty of Serins, Nightingales, Cetti'sWarblers, Zitting Cisticola, and in the evenings a Scop's Owl was heard, but traced to an inaccessible area of woodland beyond a stream.

Other Wildlife: Being fairly early in the year, butterflies were thin on the ground, but we did manage to see a single Swallowtail, Southern Gatekeepers and Speckled Woods, plus a probable Italian Wall Lizard.

Natterer's, Pipistelle, and Serotine bats were also recorded near La Vallicella.

Systematic List

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