It's good to be back!

On Wednesday morning, after a month away from Portugal, which included our Avian Adventures tour in Florida, we were ready again for some Algarve birding.  As is usual when we’ve had time away, we began by spending a few hours checking our local area around Tavira and Santa Luzia. The weather was almost perfect - clear blue sky, temperature up to 18ºC.
  
One of the reasons for being in Tavira is that we particularly enjoy seeing waders and it wasn’t surprising to find 22 species within walking distance from the town centre.  With a bit more effort we might well have added to that total.

 Bar-tailed Godwit

Whimbrel

For once we were able to watch all six of the commonly occurring gull species together in one saltpan.  There seem to be fewer Audouin’s now but probably more Mediterranean than we expected and still a few Slender-billed.   Black-necked Grebe numbers had increased to ten and while we were seeking them out a Marsh Harrier flew through; several Bluethroats and a Little Owl were exactly where we had last seen them in mid-November.

 Slender-billed Gull

Bluethroat

We stayed out until dusk hoping to see a Short-eared Owl but we were out of luck.  For several winters they hunted regularly around the Tavira saltpans but we haven’t seen one here since February 2013.  The day didn’t produce anything exceptional but with little effort and mostly from the car we recorded more than 70 species.

The only really notable bird that has occurred here while we were away was a Red-breasted Flycatcher that was found at the edge of the golf course at Quinta do Lago on 12th December.  This is a comparatively rare species in the Algarve with only about seven previous records and none quite this late in the year.  Thanks to Simon Wates, we saw one in November 2009 at Figueira but the possibility that this recent bird might still be in the area was all the excuse we (and Ray Tipper) needed for an early start yesterday for a trip to Ludo and Quinta do Lago.

One of the first birds that greeted our arrival there was a Booted Eagle and it proved to be just the first of at least nine of these lovely birds that we counted in our first half hour.  Just as impressive in their own way were 20 or more Grey Herons standing together in the soft morning light, dwarfing the Little Egrets that were sharing the same plentiful food supply.

Little Egret

Spoonbill

Nearby several Spoonbills marched purposefully away from us, three sporting an array of colour-rings details of which we have since reported.  Duck numbers had increased since our last visit; Wigeon and Teal were particularly vocal, sounds that we once associated with cold or damp winter mornings at Belvide Reservoir in Staffordshire!  There was the usual good selection of waders with Black-tailed Godwits and Dunlin the most numerous; a Kingfisher flashed past and several Cetti’s Warblers called loudly. 

Around the golf course we found a couple of Hoopoes and two Mistle Thrushes and from the pines we could hear the calls of Short-toed Treecreeper.  Most of the birds in the surrounding trees were Chiffchaffs but eventually the Red-breasted Flycatcher appeared, albeit briefly.  It hardly stayed still for more than a few seconds and quickly disappeared.  We had to wait quite a while before we saw it again but then we were able to watch it for more than half an hour as it flitted from pine to eucalyptus to olive finding the tiniest food items.  We wonder how long it will stay!

Red-breasted Flycatcher

There was time on the way home for a quick look at the saltpans near Olhão.  Amongst the Mediterranean Gulls there we managed to read two colour-rings, one from France and one from Hungary.

When we got back to Tavira there was only one way to round off a successful morning - lunch at Restaurante Ana!  It really is good to be back!

Birding by Boat

What better way to spend most of a warm (17°C), almost cloudless day than on a boat cruising around the Quatro Águas, the four waters that come together at the mouth of the Ria Gilao and lead to Tavira, Cabanas, Santa Luzia and the Atlantic Ocean?

For the bird photographer this is a wonderful opportunity when the tide and the light are both favourable. Cormorants, herons and a variety of waders, gulls and terns are the main subjects, but colourful boats and buildings are also hard to resist!

Thanks for a great day are due to Henrique of Tavira-based company, Another Level.

Santa Luzia

Santa Luzia

Great Cormorant

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Cabanas de Tavira

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Eurasian Oystercatcher - colour ringed in the Po Delta, Italy!

Bar-tailed Godwit

Sandwich Tern

Great Cormorant

Yellow-legged Gull

Santa Luzia

Cabanas de Tavira

Another Rare Bird Alert!

The warm and sunny weather continued until Thursday but since then we have had some heavy rain and it has been mostly cloudy.

We had a couple of days covering the usual sites around Tavira and Santa Luzia where a big female Peregrine Falcon was the only unusual bird seen. We used what turned out to be the last of the sunshine to photograph a Bar-tailed Godwit and some Lesser Black-backed Gulls. It’s very easy here to photograph Black-tailed Godwits but Barwits, being mainly coastal, are almost always viewed against the light and are a different proposition. The same is true of Oystercatcher, Curlew and Knot. They do come on to the saltpans at high tide but only rarely do they roost where we can get near enough for a photograph with the sun on them. This one was unusually obliging, feeding only a short distance from the road.

Bar-tailed Godwit

Lesser Black-backed Gull

On Sunday, in spite of the dismal weather and the fact that it was a hunting day, we took a trip to the Castro Verde area. Hunting is allowed here on Thursdays, Sundays and Public Holidays but we do wonder sometimes whether the locals have calendars! Anyway, the amount of shooting that we saw and heard on this occasion wasn’t enough to spoil our day, although it may have been sufficient to explain why we didn’t manage to find a single Little Bustard. Who could blame them for keeping their heads down? Happily, we did see plenty of Great Bustards and Black-bellied Sandgrouse and a good selection of raptors that included an immature Spanish Imperial Eagle and, more surprisingly, a Merlin. Lapwings and Golden Plovers were in their hundreds.

As we were driving back late in the afternoon we received a phone call from Thijs Valkenburg to tell us that he had just found a Long-billed Dowitcher on the saltpans at Olhão. There have been only a handful of records of this North American wader in Portugal and had we been at home we might have dropped everything and gone to look for it. As it was, we had no chance to get there in daylight.

So this morning at 10.30am we were at Olhão watching the Dowitcher. Even then it still didn’t seem like daylight but at least we got there before the rain started again. It almost goes without saying that we were on our own. There has been some discussion here recently about how we might improve the flow of news about rare and scarce birds and we support that. However, the fact is that there are still very few birders here and the record for the most people we have seen at a twitch in Portugal remains the 16 who came to Martinhal for the White-rumped Sandpiper in November last year. It seems likely to be a while before we are offered a Portuguese pager!

Long-billed Dowitcher

Long-billed Dowitcher

The Week in Pictures

We've been busy around Tavira this week where there has been plenty to keep us occupied:

Eurasian Griffons passed over Tavira this week, presumably heading for Tarifa. About 150 were counted on Sunday.

At least three Water Pipits have been regular at Pedras d'el Rei.

Meadow Pipits are now very numerous - but still smart little birds and quite variable in plumage.

Always popular and, in spite of what some of the books say, still quite vocal in November.

Greater Flamingos - hard to ignore.

Bar-tailed Godwit - one of at least 21 wader species currently around Tavira.

Sometimes even long-legged Flamingos get out of their depth!

Common Greenshank - always one of our favourites!

When not chasing off Little Egrets, this hybrid Western Reef x Little Egret regularly poses for photographs - tight-rope walking a speciality!

Stone-curlews are not too hard to see - if you know where to look!

Six gull species are here now and can sometimes be seen all in one place. Just two on this photograph.

Lesser Black-backed Gull - one of the most common species around here in winter.

Around the local hotspots

We were at Castro Marim this morning, our first visit for a little over a week. The number of birds there continues to be impressive and although long-legged species (Greater Flamingos, European Spoonbills, Little Egrets, Grey Herons, White Storks, Pied Avocets, Black-winged Stilts and Black-tailed Godwits) predominate there are now several pans that are muddy or have just enough shallow water to make them attractive to the smaller sandpipers and plovers. Dunlin, Curlew Sandpipers, Ringed Plovers and Kentish Plovers were particularly numerous; we managed to find a single Little Ringed Plover and, of course, it was a pleasure to see our favourite Tringas.

Pied Avocet

Yesterday morning we visited Quinta do Lago where the numbers of ducks and gulls are increasing, particularly Gadwall, Shoveler and Lesser Black-backs. Migrant passerines included Pied Flycatchers, Garden Warbler and Sedge Warbler; among the 'expected species' were Black-crowned Night-Heron, Little Bittern, Red-crested Pochard, Booted Eagle and Purple Swamp-hen but it's always fun to experience these through the eyes of people who are seeing them for the first time. "Just look at the size of its feet!" was the immediate reaction to the Swamp-hen. The tidal lagoon here is a great place to photograph Whimbrel, Ruddy Turnstone and Bar-tailed Godwit; if only the Oystercatchers were so easy!

Whimbrel

Ruddy Turnstone

Bar-tailed Godwit

At Quinta do Lago we were already half way to Lagoa dos Salgados so in the afternoon we decided to go and look for the juvenile Buff-breasted Sandpiper that was seen there at the end of last week. Remarkably, this bird showed up on almost the same date as the one that was at Salgados last year. In the event we didn't find it - there were plenty of waders to choose from but most were in an area of the lagoon that has now been rendered inaccessible by various means presumably designed to protect breeding birds. As a result they were quite a long way off and difficult to sort out through the heat haze. It was a bit frustrating. We did get good views of Little Stints, Curlew Sandpipers, Dunlin, Green Sandpiper and Whimbrel so no real complaints. A Northern Wheatear posed for photographs - this is currently the most numerous of the passerine migrant species here.

Northern Wheatear

Locally, in Tavira and Santa Luzia, there are increasing numbers of Spoonbills and Greater Flamingos. We have already had news that a colour-ringed Flamingo which we reported on Friday from Santa Luzia was ringed in France in 1996 at Etg. du Fangassier - Bouches-du-Rhône. It has apparently been reported several times over the years from Castro Marim and Marismas del Odiel and in January 2009 it was seen in Tavira. There are lots more colour-rings out there for us to look at when we have some time on our own. For example, many of the Audouin's Gulls now gathering here are colour-ringed and although most originate from the Ebro Delta we have had the odd one from Mallorca.

Greater Flamingo

Greater Flamingo

Just Around Tavira

Well, Tuesday turned out to be the last warm, sunny, cloudless day of the week! The weather here has changed significantly during the last few days and although we haven't yet had the really good downpour that most people would welcome, it has now rained on three consecutive days and it is suddenly much cooler.

So we haven't been inclined to go very far this week! In fact all of our birding has been within a mile or so of home and most of it has been from the car. We've still managed to see about 75 species and although the light has mostly been pretty poor there have still been opportunities for photography.

It's well known that to see raptor passage in the Algarve you have to go to the Sagres/Cape St Vincent area and around Tavira we can't compete with the numbers of birds that are regularly seen in the autumn at the western end of the coast. However, in the last few days we have seen eight raptor species here which is not to be sniffed at! Following on from Tuesday's Booted Eagle and Common Buzzard, we have seen Black-winged Kite, Marsh Harrier, Hen Harrier, Common Kestrel, Peregrine Falcon and Osprey. In fact, we've seen two different Hen Harriers, one of them a 'ringtail', the other the male that is presumably the same bird that has been in the area for a month now.

There are still plenty of gulls here, mostly Lesser Black-backed, Mediterranean and Audouin's. We counted over 100 Audouin's yesterday and managed to read a couple of ring numbers which we have reported. No doubt, like previous ones, they will prove to be from the Ebro Delta in Spain. There are also a few Slender-billed Gulls around town - a rarity in most of Portugal but easily found here in the south-east of the country.

Slender-billed Gull

It's not too difficult at this time of the year to find twenty or more wader species here and we never get tired of photographing them, searching through them for a rarity and simply watching them. Most of them can be found feeding on the saltpans but some species use the saltpans only for roosting at high tide and they're the ones that have so far proved the most difficult to photograph. We're referring in particular to Curlew, Knot, Whimbrel, Oystercatcher and Bar-tailed Godwit. We were fortunate to photograph three of these this afternoon, unfortunate to do so without the benefit of any sunshine!

Bar-tailed Godwits

'Grey' Knot

Eurasian Oystercatcher

Perhaps the most surprising birds found were two Razorbills at the mouth of the river at Quatros Aguas. This is a species that we have previously seen only much further west.

There's been enough rain to make the tracks through the saltpans pretty muddy so it looks as though we might need our wellies if we're going for a much-needed walk tomorrow.