Saturday 3 January 2009

Ludo & Quinta do Lago

We were at Ludo Farm and Quinta do Lago again today. We thought we should try for a photograph of the Greater Scaup that we saw on Thursday, which is after all quite a scarce bird in these parts.

Our arrival at Ludo coincided with the start of a torrential downpour including hail with the result that we spent the first half an hour sitting in the car. A selection of the common wader species and a couple of Caspian Terns kept us entertained until the storm passed.

Our walk to Lago do São Lourenço and back was an exact repeat of the one we did on New Year’s Day but today it took quite a lot longer. Mostly the weather remained reasonably sunny and bright with just an odd shower or two. We had e-mailed our friend Georg Schreier with news of the Scaup and he arrived shortly after us also hoping to see it. The three of us spent a long time searching for the bird but unfortunately there was no sign of it.

We did see today four species that we failed to find during our Big Day: Grey Wagtail, Green Sandpiper, Black-necked Grebe and Red-knobbed Coot. Of course, there were several species that we saw on Thursday that we didn’t see today! That’s birding. The Red-knobbed Coot was a bird with a white neck-collar that was first seen here several months ago but hasn't to our knowledge been reported since September.

As usual it was hard to resist photographing Purple Swamp-hens.

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