The Kalloni salt pans are the island's centrepiece, and in spring they hold flamingos, avocets, black-winged stilts, glossy ibis, ruff in breeding plumage, and a constantly changing cast of waders. The pans and the adjacent pools are worked from the tracks and are the single most productive site.

The Potamia valley and Achladeri pine forest hold the specialities birders come for — Krüper's nuthatch, a pine-forest bird whose European range is essentially this island, plus middle spotted woodpecker and olive-tree warbler.

The Ipsilou monastery hill, in the volcanic west, is the migration hotspot: an isolated stand of trees on a bare hill where exhausted migrants drop in. Cinereous bunting, isabelline wheatear and masses of flycatchers and shrikes on a good morning.

The Sigri and Faneromeni areas in the far west are the raptor and open-country sites, with long-legged buzzard, Eleonora's falcon later in the season, and Isabelline and black-eared wheatears on the stony ground.

The last week of April and the first two of May are the peak — a genuinely narrow window that the island's birding infrastructure is built around. Autumn is quieter and much less visited.

Practicalities

Mytilene has flights from Athens and seasonal European connections. A hire car is essential; the sites are spread across the island and the roads are good.

Book accommodation in Kalloni or Skala Kalloni well ahead for the spring peak, when the island's small hotels fill with birders and the daily sightings board becomes the local currency.