Flamingos in the news

Who would have thought that research into the behaviour of Greater Flamingos would be so widely reported in the news media? This week the BBC, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph were amongst those who joined Birdguides in featuring our favourite pink birds. How clever of Juan Amat and his co-authors to include a reference to make-up in the title of their paper on the use of uropygial secretions; it certainly grabbed the attention of the headline writers! You can read their full text on-line in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, a Springer journal.


Greater Flamingos occur here throughout the year. There was a failed breeding attempt this year at Lagoa dos Salgados and there have been reports of similar attempts in the past at Castro Marim, but it is as a wintering area that the Algarve is of prime importance.


Not surprisingly, the birds we see here are mostly from the major breeding colonies in France and Spain. Most stay with us through the winter months but some carry on south and we have seen birds in Djoudj National Park in Senegal and in The Gambia that probably came from the Camargue or perhaps from Laguna de Fuente de Piedra, near Malaga.



It used to be thought that Greater Flamingos paired for life – the Handbook of the Birds of the Western Palearctic says that – but the reality seems to be that many of them choose a new partner each year. Not only that but they may also choose to nest in a different colony from one year to the next.


This week we watched a group of 80 birds here in Tavira that included five colour-ringed individuals, birds that had started life in France, Spain and Italy. Seeing these birds courting and displaying, it wasn’t difficult to see how the interchange between breeding colonies comes about and presumably this must be good for genetic diversity and the health of the population. Amongst the displays, we saw some ‘neck-stretching’ and ‘head-flagging’ and even some ‘wing-saluting’ but it’s probably a little early in the season for the birds to be putting on their make-up. Rest assured, though, that we will be looking out for it!

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

First Stop - Castro Marim

It's good to be back in the Algarve again and straightaway we have been and had a good walk at one of our favourite sites here, Castro Marim. It was a warm sunny morning but a fresh breeze that kept the temperature down to a comfortable level also resulted in us seeing rather few small passerines, presumably keeping their heads down.

Two species dominated proceedings: Greater Flamingos and European Spoonbills. Birds are extremely difficult to count at Castro Marim, particularly when they are mobile, moving between the numerous saltpans. However, guestimates would put the Flamingos at close to 2,000 and the Spoonbills at maybe 500.




The main highlights for us were Little Bustards (to begin with just a few heads sticking up from long vegetation but later a flock of 25 in flight above our heads), Slender-billed Gulls (35), Stone-curlews (just 4), a Purple Heron, two Marsh Harriers, Shelducks with young, several Kingfisher sightings that included two birds apparently fighting and, of course, a nice selection of waders.

We had hoped to find the new hide open but for some reason, more than two months after it seemed to have been completed, it is still protected by a padlock. An enquiry at the Visitor Centre unfortunately brought no explanation.

Sardinian Flamingo

A recent rather grey morning was enlivened by the group of about a dozen, mostly juvenile, Greater Flamingos that I came across here in Tavira. For once they were close to the roadside and I was able to stop and take a few photographs. Three of the birds were colour-ringed and I have now received confirmation that one of them was ringed in Sardinia. Details of the other two are still awaited but the ring numbers/colours indicate that both are Spanish-ringed birds, one from the Marismas del Odiel and the other from Fuente de Piedra.


The Sardinian bird was one of 501 Flamingo chicks ringed on 1st August 2009 at Saline di Macchiareddu, near Cagliari, a site where an estimated 6,000 young were hatched last year.


It is well-known that Greater Flamingos do not necessarily return to breed in the colony where they were reared. Birds ringed in the Camargue (France), in Fuente de Piedra (Spain) and in Sardinia (Italy) have all been found breeding in other colonies around the Mediterranean and similarly birds ringed in Iran have been recovered throughout the Mediterranean, East Africa, and Asia.

A small group of birds like these in Tavira containing individuals from at least three different breeding colonies suggests that rather than staying together in family groups in the winter like, for instance, Common Cranes, Greater Flamingos quickly make new friends. So maybe that’s why some of them don’t return to their colony of hatching.

Grey Morning at Castro Marim

We spent this morning at Castro Marim. It is an indication of how awful the weather has been recently that this was our first visit there since New Year's Day. After all the rain, it was no surprise that the tracks and pathways were VERY muddy - fortunately, we had our wellies with us!

The morning started dull and cloudy and stayed that way until lunchtime - the sun made its first appearance just as we got back to the car after a four-hour walk! So our timing wasn't the best but at least it stayed dry and the temperature was quite pleasant. In fact the whole morning was very pleasant and it's remarkable that we could spend four hours on a Sunday morning at one of the Algarve's best birdwatching sites and not see another person. Literally, we saw nobody at all. Apart from hundreds of birds, we saw only two stray dogs and two Hares. Imagine having Titchwell RSPB Reserve to yourself on a Sunday morning!

Admittedly, this wasn't the best visit to Castro Marim that we've ever had. The morning's species list barely reached 70 and there were several notable absentees. When before have we been there and not seen a tern of any sort? What has happened to the Stone-curlews? It seems clear that quite a number of birds have moved on during the last couple of weeks, some of them presumably not liking the storms and resulting high water levels in most of the saltpans.

There are still a few hundred Greater Flamingos, plenty of gulls (six species including Audouin's and Slender-billed), plenty of longer-legged waders (mainly Black-winged Stilts, Black-tailed Godwits and Avocets) and we counted about 90 Black-necked Grebes and 60 Common Shelduck. A flock of about 25 Little Bustards in flight was one of the morning's highlights - we see them here regularly enough but they're not common elsewhere in the Algarve.

Not a good morning for photography but you have to try don't you?

Pied Avocets

Black-necked Grebes

Greater Flamingos

Big Day

How many species did you see on 1st January? Like lots of birders all over the world, we were out yesterday engaged in what Americans call a 'Big Day', an attempt to find as many species as possible in a day to get the New Year off to a good start. Last year we found 106 species on the first day - could we do better in 2010?

It was no surprise to start the year off with several Little Owls calling. We can look out of the window here most days and see a Little Owl and probably have three pairs within earshot. Like us, they were up early although at 6.30am it was still dark and we couldn't actually see them. No matter, as we include in our total birds that are only heard, Little Owl was first on the list.

We decided to follow a similar route to last year and so we spent most of the morning in the Ludo Farm/Quinta do Lago area. The diversity of habitats here means that a good range of species can be guaranteed and last year we came away having seen 86 by mid-day. This time we got off to an excellent start with Booted Eagle, Osprey, Black-shouldered Kite, Firecrest, Green Woodpecker, Crested Tit and Short-toed Treecreeper among the first birds seen. Cetti's Warblers were singing and a Great Spotted Woodpecker drummed briefly as we headed past the saltpans towards Lago do São Lourenço. The walk to the lake and back took about four hours and produced most of the expected waders and wildfowl. There were few surprises although Barn Swallows and House Martins were not birds that we had counted on seeing. Disappointing was the absence of Glossy Ibis and Little Bittern, two that we were hoping for. There was no sign either of a Yellow-backed Weaver or Red-crested Pochard. By the time we got back to the car our total had reached 81, slightly fewer than we had hoped.

Black-shouldered Kite on a regular perch

Next we headed back to Tavira where Blue Rock Thrush was our main target but where we also made sure of Stone-curlew and picked up several common species including Kestrel. We also had our biggest surprise of the day - an unseasonal Short-toed Eagle.

Short-toed Eagle

Great Flamingos - seen at Ludo, Tavira and Castro Marim

Then we were off to Castro Marim where Greylag Geese, Black-necked Grebes, Slender-billed Gulls, a Bluethroat, a Marsh Harrier and a Caspian Tern were thankfully all more or less where we expected them to be. We were also pleased to see a flock of about 300 Golden Plovers and then three Spotted Redshanks brought the day's total of wader species to 23 and the over all total to 104.

Caspian Tern

Slender-billed Gull

By now it was late afternoon. There were several species that we knew we could still find if sufficient daylight remained but with so little time available we decided that a return to Tavira for Audouin's Gull, Common Waxbill and Oystercatcher was our best bet. Unfortunately, when we got there, only two of these three targets obliged, Oystercatchers having disappeared to their high tide roost. As darkness fell, we waited along the river for a Night Heron to appear so that we might beat last year's total but it wasn't to be.

So, at the end of the Big Day our total of species recorded was the same as last year at 106...except that we're going to count an extra 1/2 for the 'grey egret' seen in Tavira so that we can claim to be just slightly better birders than we were in 2009!

'Grey Egret' - presumed Western Reef x Little Egret

Pretty Flamingo?

Do you remember that Manfred Mann song? From 1966?

“When she moves she walks so fine like a flamingo…When she walks by she brightens up the neighbourhood…”



Of course, not everyone sees them like that. Apparently there is no evidence that Lewis Carroll did recreational drugs but having Alice play croquet with a live flamingo as a mallet (and hedgehogs as the balls) shows that at the very least he had a particularly creative mind. It seems clear that he thought flamingos to be a somewhat comical species and regarded them as figures of fun. For him they obviously didn't bring to mind a girl who was "out of reach and out of sight".


There are not many surreal laughs of the Alice in Wonderland kind in the Concise Birds of the Western Palearctic and here the description of Greater Flamingo uses the words ‘graceful’ and ‘grotesque’ in the same sentence. Grotesque might just be taking things a bit far but you can see where they were coming from.

Here in Tavira now we've got hundreds of Greater Flamingos. They're here for the winter and they make a fine sight, particularly in flight when seen against a clear blue sky.


Back in 1979 a pop group called The Monks were one-hit wonders with a song that wasn’t about flamingos at all but which we reckon summed them up nicely. It was called Nice Legs Shame About The Face!

Another Sunday at Castro Marim

When we arrived at Castro Marim this morning it was barely light and decidely chilly; for the first hour or more another layer of clothes would have been very welcome! However, by the time we finished our walk more than five hours later the temperature had reached a more 'normal' 24°C.

There was no salt harvesting activity this morning and for a while we had the place to ourselves. It being Sunday though, one of the days on which hunting is allowed here, inevitably a few shots were fired over on the neighbouring farmland and the birds were skittish. A couple of patrolling Marsh Harriers probably didn't help. The ducks in particular, mostly Mallard and Shoveler, were quick to take off and there were plenty of opportunities also for photographing Grey Herons, Greater Flamingos and Cormorants in flight. A Stone-curlew also came by at one point.

Grey Heron

Great Cormorant

Greater Flamingos

Stone-curlew

After seeing Greylag Geese at Ludo on Friday, it was no surprise to find 13 of them here. In fact there were no real surprises at all this morning; we saw more Curlew Sandpipers than on our last visit including 50 or so in one flock; the regular flock of Black-necked Grebes was a long way off, tightly bunched and frequently diving but numbered at least 60 birds; there were 16 Little Terns, two Caspian Terns and a handful of Sandwich Terns; Audouin's and Slender-billed Gulls went uncounted; Avocets and Black-tailed Godwits are in their hundreds and although they were impossible to count today it looked as though there were still at least 200 Spoonbills. The species count for the morning was 72 and while migrants such as Northern Wheatear are still here, more and more winter birds are in evidence including Common Snipe, European Starlings and Meadow Pipits as well as the wildfowl.

Probably the morning's highlight was a flock of 34 Little Bustards, not because we don't regularly see them here but because they perhaps had more sense than to fly. We were certainly able to get closer to them while they remained on the ground than we ever have done before at Castro Marim. They just looked back at us and slowly moved away, continuing to feed as they went. Maybe they can tell the difference between a tripod and a shotgun!

Santa Luzia saltpans

Cheered greatly by the overnight news from the USA, we set off this morning to do one of our regular walks. It was bright and sunny and warm enough to be wearing shorts, although by lunchtime there was a build-up of cloud.

Starting in Tavira the walk takes us over the extensive area of saltpans that lie between the town and neighbouring Santa Luzia. It is a great place to see waders and today we found 20 species, including four Golden Plovers that are unusual in this habitat.

Greenshank

The last time we were here (25th October) we counted about 700 Greater Flamingos but we could find only about 150 this morning. Other highlights were a Bluethroat, lots of Spoonbills, six species of gulls (including Slender-billed and Audouin’s), a Peregrine Falcon and our old friend the ’Grey Egret’, seen in its usual spot.

Later in the afternoon a call from Simon Wates brought news of a Dusky Warbler reported from Quinta do Lago. It was too late for us to go and tomorrow we are expecting builders here to carry out long-awaited remedial work that we don’t want to postpone. So, we’ll just have to wait for further news of the bird and hope it stays around. We really don’t like big twitches but the nice thing about twitches here is that there probably won’t be more than half a dozen people there!

Great Bustards and Waders

Yesterday we headed north to the Baixo Alentejo and enjoyed a great day’s birding in pretty much perfect weather. The main target species was Great Bustard, usually not too difficult to find, but with a lot of agricultural activity in progress and tractors everywhere we thought we might have difficulty. Fortunately, our fears proved unfounded and we duly found a dozen or so birds that weren’t too far away from a main road. We watched them for quite a while from a vantage point we have used on several previous occasions.

Amongst everything else, it was quite a good day for birds of prey; Red Kites, Common Buzzards and Common Kestrels were all numerous, we saw several Black-winged Kites (probably our favourite raptor and one that we still tend to refer to as Black-shouldered), a beautiful male Hen Harrier, a Golden Eagle, a Booted Eagle and about 50 Eurasian Griffons.

It seems that nowhere in Portugal is safe from development and we are conscious that before long several of the wonderful areas we enjoy in the Alentejo will be blighted by more dreadful wind turbines. If golf courses weren’t bad enough..! Anyway, it was an excellent day.

This morning the request was for waders and we could do no better than walk the saltpans from Tavira where 21 species of plovers, sandpipers, stilts, etc included our favourite Greenshank and Spotted Redshank. High tide was mid-morning and the Oystercatchers, Bar-tailed Godwits and Knot were sitting it out on the bunds. When a light aircraft passed over a flock of about 700 Greater Flamingos were disturbed enough to fly around briefly, a fantastic mass of pink against the clear blue sky.

Most of the ducks here currently are Northern Shoveler but as well as these and reasonable numbers of Mallard we managed to find a few Teal, Wigeon and Pintail. For once we didn’t find any Slender-billed Gulls, but there were dozens of Audouin’s and Mediterranean Gulls among the hundreds of Lesser Black-backed and Black-headed. We also found four Caspian Terns and a handful of Little and Sandwich Terns.

A regular bird in this area is a grey egret that is presumed to be a hybrid Little Egret x Western Reef Egret. It seems to frequent the same small area every day, feeding in the channel at low tide and standing on the side of one of the saltpans when the water in the channel is too deep. There is another similar-looking bird in the Tavira area and we recently saw a much paler presumed hybrid at Lagoa dos Salgados. At this point we have no information about their origin.

Presumed Little Egret x Western Reef Egret