Algarve Update

With scarcely a day off from birding in one form or another and lots of long days out to the Alentejo, to Sagres and to Doñana, regular updates to our blog have been impossible these last few weeks.

September and October are two of the best months for birding here.  It’s migration time of course and that means birds arriving, birds leaving and birds just passing through - raptors, passerines, waders, seabirds, everything.  We've been busy!

Among all these birds can usually be found a few rarities but we have to be careful when we refer to rarities.  In the last month or so there have been records here of American Golden Plover, Lesser Flamingo, Lesser Redpoll, Rüppell’s Griffon, White-winged Tern, Herring Gull, Brent Goose, Roseate Tern, Glaucous Gull, Chimney Swift, Long-tailed Skua, Yelkouan Shearwater and Long-legged Buzzard, all of which are subject to scrutiny by the Portuguese Rarities Committee but this list no doubt includes a few that you may not think of as rare if you live in the UK, for instance.  It will be interesting to see how many of them are eventually accepted. 

Other scarce (but not officially rare) species of local interest have included Western Olivaceous Warbler, Great Egret, Grey Phalarope and Ferruginous Duck, plus Eleanora’s Falcon, Spanish Imperial Eagle and several other raptors. 

Grey Phalarope

Here in Tavira, we did hear a couple of reports of a Western Reef Egret but they almost certainly referred to the presumed hybrid garzetta x gularis egret that has been mainly around the Forte do Rato area for several weeks.

Hybrid garzetta x gularis egret

In recent autumns at least some of the rarity records in the Algarve have resulted from ringing activity but as far as we are aware that hasn’t happened this year.  The group from the UK led by Colin McShane who in previous years have ringed Common Yellowthroat, Aquatic Warbler and Common Rosefinch among others, unfortunately chose to spend a week at Vilamoura that included the only few days in the last several months that proved to be unsuitable for ringing.  This was their seventh visit here and the total number of birds ringed, while they endured wind and rain, was their lowest so far.

The 4th Sagres Birdwatching Festival during the first weekend of October seems to have been a success both for the number of people attending and for the number and variety of birds that were recorded.  Some days at Sagres / Cape St Vincent birding can be hard work so it was good that those who travelled there just for the festival had plenty to keep them entertained.

This autumn we have managed only one ‘pelagic’ trip and really it wasn’t one of the best.  We went about 5 miles out from Fuseta but saw only Cory’s and Sooty Shearwaters, a Black Tern and Northern Gannets.  Probably we should have gone a week or two earlier but that wasn’t possible.

 Northern Gannet

Black Tern

Much of our birding has been in the Eastern Algarve, at Castro Marim and in the Ria Formosa.  The numbers of birds have been impressive - e.g. 1,700 Greater Flamingos, 1,350 Audouin’s Gulls and 900 Avocets at Castro Marim - and species such as Bluethroat, Glossy Ibis, Purple Swamp-hen, Little Bittern, Slender-billed Gull, Caspian Tern and Black-necked Grebe have been popular with visiting birders and mostly easy to see.

 Black-necked Grebe

 Glossy Ibis

 Caspian Terns

Little Bittern

As usual, we've been reading and reporting colour-rings.  Three Lesser Black-backed Gulls from the Netherlands and two from Belgium were all seen at Olhão.  We are still awaiting replies concerning a Black-winged Stilt, a Spoonbill and several Greater Flamingos and Audouin's Gulls.

In other news, television personality Bill Oddie has been birding in the Algarve and has expressed support for the campaign to ‘Save Salgados’.  You can read about that here and, if you haven’t signed the petition, it’s still available here.

Back in Action

An accident, an emergency requiring a brief trip to the UK and the need to have some essential maintenance carried out on the car have all conspired to limit our birding during the last couple of weeks. We've been out and about around Tavira and Santa Luzia a few times but this morning at last we were fully back in action and headed off to Ludo and Quinta do Lago.

Of particular interest at Santa Luzia has been the presumed hybrid E. garzetta x gularis now so easy to see and photograph as it poses on fences and posts that we refer to it as 'Hollywood Egret'. It feeds regularly in the same channel and defends it against all comers. Photographs show clearly that it is the same bird that has been there for at least the last two years and we hope soon to be able to compare our images with those taken by Ray Tipper going back ten years.

Photograph from November 2008

The same bird on the same post - December 2010.

Flight shot, December 2010

Another photo from last week.

This morning's visit to Ludo and Quinta do Lago was remarkable first of all for the amazing shorts and t-shirt weather - a clear sky and a temperature that reached at least 21° C . A total of more than 80 species included two Glossy Ibises, at least one Osprey, four or more Booted Eagles and two Black-winged Kites. We also saw one of the Sacred Ibises that seems to have made the Algarve its home, but for June the day's highlights were the three different Wrynecks that punctuated our walk. Together with several Great Spotted Woodpeckers and an Iberian Green Woodpecker they were enough to make the day for any 'piciphile' - and why not?

Grey Egrets in Tavira

Most birders visiting Tavira eventually come across one of the puzzling “Grey Egrets” that are more or less resident here and we are regularly asked about them.

Santa Luzia - 7th March 2010

In trip reports you can find them referred to variously as Western Reef Egrets Egretta gularis, as ‘grey morph Little Egrets’ Egretta garzetta or as gularis x garzetta hybrids and there have been questions about them on various internet forums.

Forte do Rato - 7th October 2008

It is almost 10 years now since the first of these birds was seen here and in fact photographs of one of them by Ray Tipper were published in both Birding World and Dutch Birding as long ago as 2001.

Santa Luzia - 22nd October 2008

Currently there seem to be at least two different birds in the area; one frequents the Santa Luzia saltpans and most days can be found there at low tide feeding in the same channel; the other is most often seen near Forte do Rato. There have been odd reports of similar birds elsewhere in Portugal but for some reason Tavira seems to be the favoured location.

Santa Luzia - 2nd January 2009

It does seem fairly clear that these birds are indeed gularis x garzetta hybrids. However, Western Europe is outside the normal range of Western Reef Egret, a species that mainly occurs in tropical West Africa, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and east to India. So where have they come from?

Forte do Rato - 1st January 2010

It is reported that some Western Reef Egrets were released from captivity in Germany back in the early 1980s. They are said to have been birds imported from Pakistan and were of the eastern race, schistacea. So maybe that’s a clue.

Santa Luzia - 27th May 2008

On the other hand, in the late 1980s, Western Reef Egrets observed in the breeding season at L’Albufera de Valencia in eastern Spain were identified as being of the nominate race gularis. The first instance of breeding there by mixed pairs of this species and Little Egret was in 1988 and apparent hybrids (birds similar to those now in Tavira) have been seen there and elsewhere repeatedly since about 1993.

Clearly, some work on the DNA of these birds would be interesting.

Back in Tavira

After a short visit to the UK at least one of us is now back in Portugal! But before anyone starts to feel sorry for June, left behind in the cold, she will only be there for a couple of days before she flies out to Uganda for a two-week tour for Avian Adventures. Make up your own mind which of us has got the better deal!

The weather this morning on arrival here in the Algarve was wet and windy. There was a short interlude after lunch when the sun appeared but before long it had deteriorated again - wetter and windier!

After shopping for essential supplies there was time for a quick tour round Tavira's birding hotspots to see whether anything had changed while we've been away. There wasn't much light for photography, but when has that stopped us!

Regular readers may recognise the perch that this Common Magpie is using. We have photographed Bluethroat, Southern Grey Shrike and Whimbrel on the same branch and have seen several other species using it. Common Magpie isn't such a common bird along the coast; in fact we've never seen one west of Faro and rarely get an opportunity to photograph one.

Common Magpie

Barn Swallow and Black-tailed Godwit were two species more numerous today than they were a couple of weeks ago. There must have been almost 100 Barn Swallows feeding over the saltpans and maybe 1,000 Black-tailed Godwits spread out across the Tavira and Santa Luzia area. A few of the godwits are now showing signs of summer plumage.

Black-tailed Godwit

The usual "Grey Egrets" were seen but only one of them was within camera range. A nearby Little Egret was also hard to resist.

Western Reef x Little Egret hybrid

Little Egret

Greater Flamingos, Spoonbills, Audouin's Gulls and Stone-curlews were also in exactly the same places as always and it does just seem possible that all these birds might not have noticed that we've been missing!

Old Friends

These last three days we've had multiple visits to Castro Marim and to the Tavira and Santa Luzia saltpans. As a result and not surprisingly we've been seeing the same birds - that's not just the same species, we mean the same individuals.

Some individuals are easily recognised. Yesterday, for instance we saw both of the local hybrid 'grey egrets' that have been in the Tavira area for several years. They each have their favourite feeding areas and can be found most days without too much effort. They're like old friends.

Presumed hybrid Western Reef Egret x Little Egret

Colour-ringed birds are another obvious example of individuals that can be easily recognised. We're currently looking for a Black-tailed Godwit that has been on the saltpans here during the last three winters. We're hoping it has survived to return.

Black-tailed Godwit

There's currently a Black-tailed Godwit at Santa Luzia that has a damaged leg and can therefore be identified as an individual. It feeds in exactly the same place day after day. The likelihood is that the other Godwits feeding with it are also repeatedly using the same small area - not just day after day but perhaps, year after year.

Each year we find wintering Bluethroats in the exactly the same small patch of vegetation, Caspian Terns on the same saltpan, Stone-curlews in the same field. How many of them are, we wonder, like the colour-ringed Godwit, individuals returning to places they know to be safe and to have a good supply of food? And, of course, it's not only the repeated use of wintering sites, for birds heading for sub-Saharan Africa it's reliance on the same stopover sites for 're-fuelling'.

Bluethroat

So then there is the question of what happens to migrant birds such as these when the places they know and rely on are changed from one year to the next. What happens to the bird that flies hundreds of miles and arrives tired and hungry to find that its familiar reedbed has been destroyed, its usual wetland drained, a golf course where that stubble field used to be? Some will no doubt be able to adapt, to find another site, but for some it will be the difference between surviving or not.

Local birding

Since our trip to the Alentejo on Sunday we’ve stayed mainly around Tavira this week. There’s been some photography from our mobile hide (aka the car) and we’ve explored on foot areas not far from here that we’ve previously only driven past.

The photography involved, amongst others, a frustratingly mobile Grey Wagtail made all the more difficult to photograph by an aggressive White Wagtail that would chase it off at regular intervals. This is a familiar scenario that we have watched at the same site on numerous occasions through October and November, presumably involving the same individuals.

Grey Wagtail

Apart from that we have checked on the ‘Grey Egret’ at Santa Luzia which was in its usual place; we’ve looked in on the local Barn Owl at its roost; we’ve seen Redwing (scarce in the Eastern Algarve) and Woodlarks just outside town and we’ve had a Short-toed Eagle fly over the nearby quarry.

We did venture as far as Vila Real do Santo António (we like to call it VRSA) for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon. It’s an unusual town, unique in the Algarve, in that the streets are laid out in a right-angle grid system. If you want shops that sell towels and bed linen, this is the place for you - the town centre is full of them! We did what we had to do and then drove just out of the town to the mouth of the Guadiana River to see whether we could find any Little Terns. Most Little Terns leave Europe in October to spend the winter off the coast of West Africa, some going as far as Ivory Coast and Ghana. However, a few usually remain here alternating between the river mouth and the nearby saltpans at Castro Marim. We counted 12 at Castro Marim on 23rd November but could find only three yesterday on the river. About 100 Oystercatchers were on a sandbank in the middle of the river but, as the Guadiana is the international border, they might have been in Spain!

And wherever we’ve been, no matter what the habitat, we have seen Chiffchaffs, gazillions of Chiffchaffs!

Rüppell’s Griffon

The long drive west is starting to become a habit! At least today we didn’t go all the way to Cape St Vincent. Our target this morning was a vulture roost site in the Serra do Espinhaç o de Cã o. There had been reports of a possible Rüppell’s Griffon in the area for a few days but last night the identification had been confirmed and the bird was reported to have gone to roost with about 100 Eurasian Griffons. Raptor passage and in particular the movements of vultures are being monitored in connection with a major wind farm development. The survey team are using radar to track the birds and so the directions to the lookout point were quite precise. We arrived there at about 8.30am.

We were quickly able to locate about 30 Eurasian Griffons sitting in the trees and we were expecting to wait until all the birds took to the air before we could look for the Rüppell’s. Although a few Eurasians did get up for a brief fly around, remarkably we found the Rüppell’s while it was still perched in a tree. It stood out amongst the Eurasians as being a very much darker individual and we believe it is probably a second year bird. Although the reference books tell us that Rüppell’s Griffon is a non-migratory species that is a resident of sub-Saharan Africa, there have been quite a number of records in Iberia in recent years and we know that one was seen at Tarifa in Andalucí a last month.

Eventually, after an hour or so, most of the vultures got up and began soaring around the wind turbines. At this point it was easy to pick out two Egyptian Vultures by their much smaller size and distinctive shape but the light was awful and once it was airborne we didn’t see the Rü ppell’s again. The turbines are not yet operational but it was easy to see the potential here for the vultures to have some serious problems. Two of them were seen yesterday to collide with the turbine blades and there is little doubt that birds would have been killed if the blades had been rotating. There is a suggestion that in future the turbines will be switched off at raptor migration times but we have our doubts (to say the least!).

On the way back to Tavira we diverted to Lagoa dos Salgados for another look at the Spotted Crake (the Pectoral Sandpiper seems to have gone) and this time, although the light was still poor, we managed to get a photograph.

Spotted Crake

Another ’grey egret’ here looked to us to possibly be a melanistic E. garzetta rather than a hybrid E. garzetta x E. gularis like the one seen earlier in the week. We photographed it alongside a Little Egret. It looks like one of those washing powder adverts - whose mother doesn’t know about Persil?

Two Little Egrets?

Working the local patch

We were at Castro Marim again this morning. For the first time in a week it was quite cloudy and the temperature remained comfortable all day. We walked nowhere near as far as we usually do but probably saw just as many species.

The highlight was seeing a flock of 13 Little Bustards; they’re not uncommon here but can’t be guaranteed. Additional to the 19 wader species found in the same area last week were about 10 Northern Lapwings and a Wood Sandpiper. There were still a few Slender-billed Gulls; Mediterranean Gulls had increased to double figures and there were at least 100 Audouin’s Gulls. A few Northern Pintail had arrived to swell the duck numbers and in addition to the usual Caspian and Little Terns, about a dozen Black Terns were feeding over the marsh. One or two Marsh Harriers were around, a Peregrine Falcon was sitting on a post in the middle of the salinas and just as we were leaving a Booted Eagle passed over.

On the way back we checked our best local sites for Blue Rock Thrush and Bluethroat and were successful at both, although we had to be patient. It was a case of “come on out - we know you’re in there” as we sat in the car waiting for them to appear. The Bluethroat was our first of the autumn but was in exactly the same spot that we see them every year which, not surprisingly, we call ’Bluethroat corner’.

While we were looking for a Bluethroat we saw another grey egret. We weren’t able to say with any certainty whether it was the same bird we saw at Santa Luzia last week but the suspicion is that there are at least two birds that frequent the Tavira area. Ray Tipper is comparing the many photographs of these birds and we will be adding the one below to his collection. Also seen here was one of the pinkest Slender-billed Gulls we have seen. Not only were its underparts pink but also its rump, tail and primaries. Oystercatcher and Bar-tailed Godwit brought the wader species total to 24 since we arrived back here last week.

'Grey Egret'