Lots of migrants arriving

A strange bright object appeared high in the sky above Castro Marim on Tuesday morning; some older residents of the town thought they remembered it as something they used to call “the sun”!

And the sunshine has continued and with it have come more and more migrant birds. At Cerro do Bufo, we saw Great Spotted Cuckoo, Yellow Wagtails, Pallid Swifts and the ‘full set’ of hirundines including Sand Martin; we heard a singing Sedge Warbler. Later, near the Visitor Centre, we found a Woodchat Shrike and watched a delightful little Spectacled Warbler; in the afternoon a Common Cuckoo was calling loudly at nearby Aldeia Nova.

Woodchat Shrike

Enjoying the sun - an Iberian Wall Lizard

Wednesday was another 'bustard day' in the Castro Verde area. For the record, we saw 50 Great Bustards and about 65 Little Bustards (not to mention several Short-toed Eagles and Griffon Vultures and a Spanish Imperial Eagle). There are plenty of Lesser Kestrels and Montagu's Harriers around now, Woodchat Shrikes have joined the resident Southern Grey Shrikes on roadside power lines and Great Spotted Cuckoos are easy enough to find; we've also seen Little Ringed Plover and a few Black-eared Wheatears have arrived.

Ribeira do Vascão - boundary between the Algarve and the Alentejo

Countless White Storks nest in the Castro Verde area

Yesterday morning, we went to Cape St Vincent where off shore the numerous passing Gannets were mostly adults heading north to their breeding sites. Near Forte do Beliche we came across three smart-looking Ring Ouzels , we watched a Montagu's Harrier in the Vale Santo and again saw a Woodchat Shrike. We also watched a Short-toed Eagle soaring and saw two more from the motorway as we headed back east.

Lighthouse at Cape St Vincent

Vale Santo

Rugged coastline at the south-western tip of mainland Europe

Yellow hoop-petticoat daffodil

On the way home we called at Lagoa dos Salgados where there is now plenty of water again. Our first Garganey of the year was one of six duck species seen and we had just a brief look at our first Alpine Swift. Most of the time we were there a pale phase Booted Eagle was soaring high above. A lingering Bluethroat seen from the boardwalk was a definite crowd-pleaser.

'Hide' at Lagoa dos Salgados - more of a viewing platform and another design not to be copied!

All in all, we've had a really good week and after months of dismal weather it's great to see the countryside lit up not just by the sun but by lots of birds that we haven't seen in a while and wonderful displays of flowers.

Lagoa dos Salgados

My week-long tour of the Algarve’s best bird watching sites took me on Monday to Lagoa dos Salgados (sometimes referred to as Pêra Marsh), undoubtedly one of the most popular sites with birders visiting here from the UK. The long-running, nightmare story of Salgados is well-known and has received coverage in various UK publications but if you’re not familiar with it and have half an hour or more to spare, take a look here. Try not to get too angry!

One of the ongoing problems at Salgados is that the lagoon is regularly, but for no obvious sensible reason, emptied of water. On Monday I found that it had again been recently drained. There were remaining areas of standing water sufficient to hold a few ducks (Mallard, Gadwall, Shoveler, Pintail and Teal) and even an odd Little Grebe but mostly the bed of the lagoon was bare, wet mud - after something like 50 days of rain, nowhere here is dry! Waders included about 100 Black-winged Stilts, almost that number of Black-tailed Godwits and lesser numbers of Ringed, Kentish, Grey and Golden Plovers, Dunlin and Sanderling. Also on the mud were countless White Wagtails, 50 or so Black-headed Gulls, just a handful of Mediterranean Gulls and about 40 Sandwich Terns. Many of the gulls are now sporting almost complete breeding plumage. Two of the Black-tailed Godwits, on the other hand, were sporting colour-rings indicating it seems that one of them was ringed in Iceland and the other in Scotland - further details are awaited.

For some time now a feature at Salgados have been a group of Northern Bald Ibises that are thought to have absconded from the re-introduction project at La Janda, across the border in Spain. Originally six of these birds arrived but at least one is known to have died. On Monday I saw only two. They are regularly seen on the neighbouring golf course and wherever they appear they are very approachable and easy to photograph.

Northern Bald Ibis

Northern Bald Ibises were once widespread across the Middle East, northern Africa and southern Europe but disappeared from Europe over 300 years ago, and are now considered critically endangered. There are believed to be about 500 wild birds remaining in southern Morocco, and fewer than 10 in Syria, where the species was rediscovered in 2002. To combat these ebbing numbers, reintroduction programmes have been instituted internationally, with a semi-wild breeding colony in Turkey, as well as sites in Austria, Spain and northern Morocco. A pair bred in the wild in Spain in 2008 and 2009. Maybe the Salgados birds will eventually tire of watching golf and go and find a cliff ledge nesting site somewhere in the western Algarve.

The Last Few Days...

For us, highlights of the last week or so in the Eastern Algarve have been a Black Kite and more than 20 Slender-billed Gulls at Castro Marim, three Black-crowned Night-Herons and about 60 Stone-curlews just outside Tavira and two Penduline Tits and two Griffon Vultures near the Spanish border.

We’ve spent quite a lot of time sitting in the car photographing waders and we’ve also been trying to get some better shots of the local Bluethroats. There seem to be three or possibly four different Bluethroats in quite a small area but so far they have ignored the perch we provided for them, leaving it to a very obliging Sardinian Warbler to pose on.






The weather has taken a turn for the autumnal, temperatures still 20° and above but for a few days now we have regularly had a stiff breeze blowing. Yesterday we made the long trip out to Cape St Vincent (which seems to have a climate of its own!) and suffered a wet and windy morning there before retreating back to Alvor and then to Lagoa dos Salgados where the weather was much better.

From the lighthouse we watched countless Northen Gannets passing just offshore, the majority of them adults, gleaming white against the grey sea. A few Cory’s Shearwaters also went by. Before the weather closed in completely we did see a couple of distant Griffon Vultures, a handful of Common Buzzards and a Hen Harrier but really it wasn’t a morning for raptor passage. Four Ring Ouzels were probably the 'best' birds seen.

At Alvor there was a selection of the usual common wader species, a Water Pipit and just a single Greater Flamingo. A Water Rail was making a lot of noise but typically remained hidden.

Lagoa dos Salgados has recently been drained again but still had a decent number of birds to offer. A Peregrine Falcon was sat on a post in the middle of the dry lagoon, a Marsh Harrier was patrolling and what appeared to be a late female Montagu’s Harrier was also hunting along the far shore. There were about 20 each of Spoonbills and Cormorants and at least 50 Grey Herons. Other than a flock of 30 or so Northern Lapwings there were just a few waders including a single Golden Plover.

Lagoa dos Salgados and more

Back in the Algarve and yesterday we headed for Lagoa dos Salgados. With a new camera to try out we concentrated mostly on the waders including a surprising Buff-breasted Sandpiper, the first time we have seen this species in Portugal. The camera is a Canon 50D and there's hardly been time yet to read the manual but here are a few 'first attempts':

European Golden Plover

Ringed Plover

Buff-breasted Sandpiper

Osprey

Dunlin

Little Stint

Today we were around the Cape St Vincent area in the morning where Northern Wheatears and Pied Flycatchers were the most numerous passerine migrants. A Golden Oriole was an unexpected find but otherwise we saw the usual suspects including Red-billed Chough, Blue Rock Thrush and a flock of 19 Little Bustards. We had lunch at the raptor watchpoint but in our short time there saw only a Hen Harrier and a handful of Booted Eagles.

On the way back we stopped for an hour or so at the Alvor Estuary where we had an enjoyable walk and saw the expected Greater Flamingos, Spoonbill and a selection of waders that included Greenshank and Little Stint.

Work and Play

The last few days have seen us birding at several sites along the Algarve coast with mixed success.

On Friday we were at Castro Marim and the surrounding area. It was a relaxed day of ‘social’ birding with our friend, Georg. We hadn’t seen him for a while and there was plenty to talk about but we still managed to find more than 90 species during the day. Highlights included a Purple Heron, several Little Bustards, at least 30 Slender-billed Gulls, a Wood Sandpiper, a Great Spotted Cuckoo and maybe half a dozen Collared Pratincoles. Our visit to what we used to refer to as the disused airstrip at Aldeia Nova was memorable. First of all we noticed that there was actually a light aircraft parked by the derelict buildings and then we saw the police arriving in numbers, followed by a television news crew. The evening news report confirmed what we surmised at the time, that drugs were involved. With evidence in Peter’s passport of a recent visit to Colombia, we were relieved not to be interviewed! From now on it will be called the little-used airstrip.

We returned to Castro Marim late on Saturday afternoon. We had arranged to meet Dave Gosney and his partner, Liz who are currently on a three-month tour of Spain, Portugal and Morocco, working on updates of Dave’s Finding Birds in… books and filming for a new series of DVDs. We saw again a few of the birds seen on Friday, including Little Bustards, Caspian Terns and Slender-billed Gulls but again this was essentially a ‘social’ visit. And naturally we have rather mixed views about bird finding guides!

Tavira saltpans were more or less birdless on Sunday morning. We did see one of the resident ‘grey egrets’, presumed to be garzetta x gularis hybrids, feeding in its usual place at low tide but it was very windy and we soon decided that there more pressing matters to attend to.

Yesterday we had a very good morning at Quinta do Lago. A low-flying Black Kite was the star bird for Elaine and Julie who were with us and we were pleased to see another Purple Heron, our third on successive visits to this site. The tide was high giving good opportunities to photograph a few waders.

Grey Plover

Whimbrel

Ruddy Turnstone

We took our picnic lunch to Lagoa dos Salgados. We had been disappointed on our last visit there (18th March) to find that the lagoon had been drained but the latest news was that it had been re-flooded and that on Thursday last week there were lots of birds, including many waders and Flamingos. What another huge disappointment then to find on our arrival that the lagoon was again just a huge area of lifeless mud! It certainly starts to look as though Salgados, in spite of its recognised year round importance for birds, in spite of all the campaigning, press coverage and questions in the Lisbon Parliament, will be after all be sacrificed to the developers. How can anyone want yet another sterile golf course in place of such a wonderful wildlife site?

We did see at Salgados our first Alpine Swifts of the year and we had close-up views by the parking area of the four Northern Bald Ibises that have been there for several months, the ones that absconded from the Spanish re-introduction project. One of the Ibises caught an Iberian Worm Lizard (Blanus cinereous) which caused a bit of a squabble between them.

Northern Bald Ibis with Iberian Worm Lizard

Northern Bald Ibis

We spent the afternoon walking round the marsh at Alvor. Unfortunately, it became very windy and conditions for birding were difficult to say the least. There were about 30 Flamingos present and a selection of waders that included a single Golden Plover which appeared to have an injury to one of its wings, although it managed to fly away from us before we could get a photograph. It was that sort of afternoon.

Work and play? What's the difference?

Lagoa dos Salgados

This morning we set out early for Lagoa dos Salgados located about an hour’s drive from Tavira. We had received a message late last night from Ray Tipper that a Spotted Crake and a Pectoral Sandpiper had been found there, two species that are rare in Portugal. Ray had already seen them and that was encouragement enough for us to set an early alarm and visit what is in any case one of the best birding sites in the Algarve.

We had been disappointed only a few days ago to hear that Salgados had been drained again and it currently makes a bit of a sorry sight. The ongoing story of the battle to save Salgados, involving SPEA and the RSPB, has been detailed elsewhere but in spite of all the efforts that are supposedly being made to protect the site, seeing it today did nothing to cause us any optimism about its future.

Having said that, it has not yet completely dried out and there is quite an extensive area of wet mud that is proving attractive to Ringed Plovers and Dunlin and a few Common Snipe, Grey Plovers and Little Stints. And because the suitable habitat is limited, finding the Spotted Crake and the Pectoral Sandpiper didn’t prove too difficult. Also seen were one Purple Swamp-hen, four Caspian Terns, 17 Spoonbills, 24 Grey Herons, a Peregrine Falcon, countless Black-headed Gulls, several Northern Wheatears, a Whinchat and at least four Bluethroats.

From Salgados we headed back east, calling on the way at Vilamoura, a hive of activity ahead of a major golf tournament that starts there on 16th October. We had a walk in the Parque Ambientale, visiting both of the hides and then having a look at the lagoons at the adjacent water treatment plant. We had several sightings of Kingfishers, a Common Buzzard and a Marsh Harrier provided the raptor interest, Cetti’s Warblers were calling loudly everywhere, Willow Warblers were numerous and there was a flock of about 50 Yellow Wagtails. From one hide we had a brief up-close view of a Purple Swamp-hen, from the other just Eurasian Coots and Little Grebes. The lagoons held a few ducks (Gadwall, Common Pochard and Shoveler) and hundreds of Lesser Black-backed and Yellow-legged Gulls. Butterflies included a couple of Monarchs.

Monarch (Danaus plexippus)

Brief stops at a couple of other sites on the way home produced Blue Rock Thrush, Green Woodpecker, Grey Wagtail, Sandwich Tern and Whimbrel.