St Martin's summer

A severe storm on 1st November brought torrential rain to the Algarve and was followed by more rain the next morning.  The area between Quarteira and Portimão was reported to be the worst affected and there was severe flooding in the popular resort of Albufeira where sadly one person died as a result.  For some of the coverage see here and here (which includes some aerial footage taken over Lagoa dos Salgados).

Since then we have been enjoying a St Martin’s summer - for almost two weeks we have had sunshine, mostly cloudless skies and temperatures reaching a comfortable 23°C or even higher.
During this time we have mostly been visiting our usual haunts along the coast of the Eastern Algarve but there have also been longer excursions to Sagres and Cape St Vincent and inland to the Castro Verde area.

Part of the Castro Verde / Mértola plains

 The coast at Cape St Vincent

In the Baixo Alentejo, Common Cranes have arrived to spend the winter and both Great & Little Bustards are now much easier to find than they were before the rains.  Red Kites and Hen Harriers have now replaced the Black Kites and Montagu’s Harriers that were here for the breeding season.  On one trip up there we were surprised to find four Mute Swans on a reservoir where just a couple of weeks earlier we had seen two of these unexpected visitors.  We were almost as surprised to find four Great Egrets at another lake nearby but at least we could think that they were truly wild birds.

Little Bustard

Inevitably, we have made multiple visits to Quinta do Lago where Purple Swamphens and Little Bitterns are so easy to see and sometimes to photograph and there are also opportunities, if you are lucky, to photograph Common Snipe and Kingfisher.  While waiting for these birds to appear, it’s hard to resist filling up the memory card with a variety of duck species!

 Common Snipe

 Northern Pintail

 Purple Swamphen

 Eurasian Teal

Little Bittern

Nearby at Ludo we have been seeing Booted Eagles and Black-winged Kites and this is one of several places we’ve seen Firecrests.

 Booted Eagle

Firecrest

We also had a morning at Rocha da Pena where a long uphill walk to the summit at Talefe (479m) provided marvellous views over the surrounding countryside and a modest selection of birds that included a single Ring Ouzel, which was our main reason for being there.  Ring Ouzels are regular autumn and winter visitors here and Rocha da Pena is always a good bet when it comes to finding them.

 Rocha da Pena

As to be expected, rarities have been fewer but there were several reports of Grey Phalaropes after the storm and a drake Long-tailed Duck near Faro was a good find (by Thijs Valkenburg).  We wonder whether it was the same bird that was briefly at the same site in February.

Long-tailed Duck

In Tavira we have been reading colour-rings, mostly those on Mediterranean Gulls but also on Audouin’s, Lesser Black-backed & Slender-billed Gulls.  There have been as many as 500 Meds on the saltpans by the Estrada das 4 Águas and they have come from Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Spain, Poland and Hungary.  Some of them are birds that we have seen here in previous years.  There have been Lesser Black-backs from Belgium, Iceland and Alderney while the Audouin’s have been from Spain (Ebro Delta and Mallorca) and from the local colony on the Ilha da Barreta in the Ria Formosa.

Mediterranean Gull

 Marsh Harrier ready to be released

Finally, we should mention the visit we made to our friends Fábia and Thijs at RIAS (the Centro de Recuperação e Investigação de Animais Selvagens) at Quinta de Marim.  It is the season for them to be taking into care any Griffon Vultures that are too weak and hungry to continue their migration but we were there to be involved in a happy outcome, the release back to the wild of a Marsh Harrier.  Fortunately, this bird had not been badly injured and was fully recovered after just a short stay.

Double Crested!

With an unusually high number of Yellow-browed Warblers occurring this autumn in Britain and other parts of Western Europe it was probably just a matter of time before the species was reported in Portugal. Yesterday afternoon we received word of one in the Algarve, at Barranco Velho. Apparently it was found alongside the main road by a lucky birder who was walking back to his car having stopped in the village to buy a bottle of water. Unfortunately, it has not been seen since but it has put us on notice (as if we needed it!) that treasures can be found amongst all the hundreds of Chiffchaffs.

Yellow-browed Warbler follows Dusky Warbler, Little Bunting and Wallcreeper in a list of recent rarities here in which Goldcrest has gone unmentioned. Although not as rare in Portugal as a whole as the other three, Goldcrest is definitely a scarce bird in the Algarve and several long time birders have been seeing them here for the first time during the last couple of weeks. Today we caught up with Goldcrest at Ludo where we were birding with our friend, Georg Schreier. We had seen three Firecrests before the ‘rare’ Goldcrest appeared!

Firecrest

One of the main reasons for going to Ludo was to try and photograph Penduline Tit, a mission that proved impossible. It wasn’t that we couldn’t find our bird, just that it (or possibly they) showed no signs of wanting to co-operate. Other species of note here before we went off to nearby Faro beach for a cup of coffee were Common Buzzard, Booted Eagle and Iberian Green Woodpecker.

Later we made a rare visit to the ETAR da Zona Noroeste de Faro - the water treatment works by the airport. Access is currently even more difficult than usual as building works are in progress but through the perimeter fence we were able to see that most of the ducks were Shoveler with a few Teal and Gadwall amongst them, plus a few Little Grebes and Eurasian Coots. Our reward for an otherwise unremarkable visit was a Great Egret, a scarce bird in these parts and maybe the same individual we saw in the Ludo area almost three weeks ago.

The temperature today again reached about 70º F. Amongst several butterflies seen was a Wall Brown.