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.

Colour-ringed Gulls

At least one Short-eared Owl is still an attraction hunting over the local saltpans here in Tavira but the last few days have seen us giving more attention to the many gulls that have been loafing in the same area.

Mediterranean Gull

In particular, there are currently about 300 Mediterranean Gulls using the same bund every day and, of course, we’ve been reading and reporting colour-rings.  Green ones, white ones and red ones – so far we’ve been able to read 20 of them and although we’ve not yet had any details confirmed it looks as though we’ve got birds from Belgium, France, Hungary and Poland.

We’ve also managed to read a couple of Lesser Black-back rings.  One of them is a bird that was ringed here in the Algarve after being ‘rescued’ but we believe the other is from Norway and we’re looking forward to receiving confirmation.

While we were looking at the gull flock on Thursday afternoon the whole lot took flight and cleared off when an Osprey flew over, presumably the same bird that we had been so pleased to see a few days before but which now had brought to a premature end our search for rings.  Briefly, we were a bit annoyed but the mood quickly changed when we noticed that there was in fact a single gull remaining.  It was a first-winter Little Gull, not a very common bird here and only the third we have seen in the Algarve in December.

Little Gull

At a different site nearby there are still more than 100 Audouin’s Gulls, which like the Meds are faithful to one particular area day after day and therefore easy to see.  Again there are rings to be read and recently these have included several birds from the colony on the Ilha da Barreta here in the Ria Formosa as well as the usual birds from the Ebro Delta in Spain.

Audouin's Gull

Slender-billed Gulls are another story!  There are about 15 of them here currently but they seem to spend all of their time on the water with legs submerged giving only an occasional glimpse of a ring.

Slender-billed Gull

She's Back!

At 3.52 metres, yesterday afternoon’s high tide was one of the highest this month.  I couldn’t resist the temptation!  After a morning spent tapping away at the keyboard, I felt that I had earned a break.  I headed for Olhão, definitely one of the best places to see flocks of gulls and waders sitting out the period of high water.

As well as wanting to see flocks of roosting birds, I went with two other objectives:  I thought there would be a good chance to photograph Mediterranean Gulls and Caspian Terns; I also expected to find a few colour-ringed birds among the hundreds of gulls.

The afternoon was largely successful.  By the time I arrived thousands of birds had already gathered.  There was nothing unusual that I could find but the numbers were impressive.  Eventually I managed to get a few reasonable images of the two target species but I managed to find only one colour-ringed Lesser Black-backed Gull.  Six colour-ringed Greater Flamingos were some consolation.

The Lesser Black-back had been ringed as an adult on 30th May 2011 at IJmuiden, Forteiland in The Netherlands.  Only a week ago it had been reported from the Marismas del Odiel in Spain.  Thank you, Kees Camphuysen for these details – if only we had such quick replies to all our ring reports!

As I was coming away I hesitated to drive past an area where several hundred gulls were resting even though they were much too far away for me to have read any rings that there might have been.  As I was looking at them through the ‘scope, a Portuguese guy rode past on a bike, a man probably in his sixties.  From the way he was dressed, I guessed he was going fishing.  We both said ‘boa tarde’, as is customary, but he went on his way with hardly a pause.

Minutes later, just as I was packing up and ready to go, I realised that the fisherman had returned.  He was standing about 30 metres away, waving to me, beckoning me to follow him.  He was holding his hands to his eyes making as though he had binoculars.  Had he found a Ring-billed Gull?  Did he need help identifying a Dowitcher?  Or did he just want to show me the flocks of birds that I had spent the last two hours looking at?  My guess was the last of these!  He had no English to tell me and I had no Portuguese to explain that I was already aware of the hundreds of birds that he had just happened upon.

What to do?  Should I ignore him and be on my way?  No, he was just so insistent and so enthusiastic, there was nothing for me to do but go with him, following behind as he encouraged me to go slowly and quietly!  Eventually, he had me sit on a low wall and from there we looked across to a saltpan that was crowded with honking Greater Flamingos.  Very soon he went on his way, leaving me to enjoy the birds but after a few minutes I could see him again, about 200 metres away this time and again beckoning me to join him for a different and better view.  There was no alternative!

There is a widely held believe that the interest that most older Portuguese have in birds extends only as far as wanting to know how to cook them.  However, I like to think that this fisherman was an exception.  My guess is that he has ridden his bike past all these birds on hundreds of occasions but that this day he was so lifted by the impressive sight and sounds of so many gulls, waders and Flamingos that he immediately wanted to share them with somebody.  I might have wished that it had been a Ring-billed Gull but I’m glad that I didn’t resist or reject his random act of kindness in wanting me to be that somebody and coming back to get me.

Eventually I did get away and on the way home I called in at Santa Luzia saltpans.  The subject “She’s Back” refers not to June (who remains in Colombia) but to Redshank H19.  Regular readers will perhaps remember that this Dutch-ringed Common Redshank has spent most of the last two winters (its only two winters) in the same corner of the same saltpan at Santa Luzia.  She has been back in The Netherlands during the summer but I hear from Wim Tijsen who ringed the bird that she has so far failed to find a mate there.  Now she is back here in the Algarve and it was only because I have been looking for her that I spotted her in amongst a flock of Black-tailed Godwits in water that was so deep I could hardly see the ring on her leg.  I wonder whether she will spend the next six months in the same saltpan – I bet she does!  

A Mixed Bag of Birding

It continues to be dry and sunny here with temperatures rising as high as 18º C most days. It’s a little over two weeks since we returned to the Algarve after our tours in Ethiopia and the USA and during that time we have seen mainly clear blue skies. That kind of weather makes it hard to resist going out birding and there have been only a couple of days when we have even thought about resisting! There's been guiding, survey work and lots more...

Yesterday we spent the whole day working on our Atlas square, carrying out timed counts of the birds in six different tetrads. That’s the Atlas Aves Invernantes e Migradoras or Atlas of Wintering and Migratory Birds, a project co-ordinated by SPEA which started last August and will continue until February 2013.

Our survey area is a 10km square in the rolling hills north of Tavira. It’s not far away and there are parts of it that we have regularly driven through, but we haven’t really done much birding there until now. Visiting and birding in new areas are the bonuses that come from atlas survey work.

Green Sandpiper – one of four wader species that we found along a short stretch of the Ribeira de Beliche

Spanish Festoon – just one of several butterfly species seen yesterday

Earlier in the week there was a cross border trip to the Doñana area, the highlight of which was finding a really wet and muddy ricefield that was just teeming with birds. There were thousands of waders of at least ten species plus Glossy Ibises, Yellow and White Wagtails, Little Egrets, Purple Swamp-hens, Meadow Pipits and probably more. Nearby, La Cañada de Rianzuela was also full of birds but otherwise much of Doñana was very dry and rather birdless. It’s a bit ironic that the birdiest area should be outside the National Park!

Little Ringed Plover – many were seen in the flooded ricefield and there was one in our Atlas square

We spent one morning last week near Castro Marim helping to make artificial flamingo nests. They have been sited in a protected area where there is no public access and the idea, which has been successful elsewhere, is that such nests might stimulate some of the Greater Flamingos that occur there to stay and breed. There was an unsuccessful nesting attempt at Lagoa dos Salgados in 2010 that was widely reported as being the first in the Algarve but there is actually a record of successful breeding at Castro Marim in 1987. Maybe they will try again...

Making mud pies to encourage Flamingos to nest!

Otherwise we’ve been birding at the regular sites along the Algarve coast. We were pleased to find that the two long-staying Snow Buntings were still in more or less the same spot along the beach at Vila Real de Santo António where they were first seen before Christmas. Debate continues concerning their subspecific identity!

Nivalis or insulae? You decide!

At Vilamoura we were able to find only four Ferruginous Ducks but there have been reports recently of as many as 17 of them there.

Ferruginous Duck

Short-eared Owls continue at the Tavira saltpans but it has been a while since we saw more than two of them.

Short-eared Owl

Mediterranean Gulls have been a feature of the saltpans at Olhão. More than 200 of them were counted this week including several with colour-rings, birds originating from France and Belgium it seems. There are also two pairs of Common Shelducks displaying there, a species that appears to be increasing in number in the Algarve.

Mediterranean Gull

In the last few days we’ve also seen a Dutch-ringed Black-tailed Godwit, both French- and Spanish-ringed Greater Flamingos and a ‘rescued’ Yellow-legged Gull that acquired its colour-ring here in the Algarve at the Centro de Recuperacao e Investigacao de Animais Selvagens where it was presumably treated successfully.

Dutch Black-tailed Godwit

Hot and Hectic!

With temperatures continuing around 25°C along the coast and 5 degrees warmer than that in the Baixo Alentejo, it’s been a another warm week for us as well as a fairly hectic one.

We’ve enjoyed two reasonably successful trips to the plains around Castro Verde looking for the special birds of that area. Even if we didn’t find Little Bustards, any day that produces four species of eagles has to be considered a good day!

On the other hand, our trip to Sagres and Cabo de São Vicente at the far western end of the coast was something of a disappointment - we simply picked the wrong day. Of course we were hoping to see some raptors migrating but few were in evidence – just a few Egyptian Vultures, a couple of Booted Eagles and one or two Hen Harriers. Not only that but we missed seeing the Rose-coloured Starling that was reported in the area. Lots of Northern Gannets and Cory’s Shearwaters were passing offshore and there might well have been more but we came away and spent the afternoon at Lagoa dos Salgados.

Black Redstart at Cabo de São Vicente

Salgados had an excellent assortment of birds in spite of the water level being rather higher than ideal. Purple Swamp-hens and Glossy Ibises were amongst the species seen. On the way back, we called at a site that regularly provides Black-crowned Night Herons and Little Bitterns with hardly the need to get out of the car. On this occasion it also provided a bonus in the form of a Wryneck.

Of course, Wednesday’s Pectoral Sandpiper was the week’s main highlight but, in terms of birds that we don’t often see here, a group of five Sacred Ibises is worthy of mention. Maybe while there are still only five of them we should be considering whether these are birds we really want here – perhaps a topic for another day.

Pectoral Sandpiper

Sacred Ibises

A morning spent in the Ria Formosa began well with five Booted Eagles, two Black-winged Kites and two Common Buzzards in the first half hour. In fact it’s been a good week for Black-winged Kites, a species which definitely seems to be increasing in numbers here. Twice recently, early starts have resulted in Red-necked Nightjars being the first birds of the day.

As usual, the Tavira/Santa Luzia saltpans have had a fair amount of our attention. This week the number of Mediterranean Gulls has increased and it’s now sometimes possible to see six gull species together – often with a Caspian Tern amongst them. More Bluethroats have arrived but there must surely be more to come and the same is true of Chiffchaffs, one of the most numerous species here in winter. With unseasonably warm weather being enjoyed further north, perhaps some of these migrants aren’t yet feeling the need to move south. The local Stone-curlews have been more difficult to see recently but can still usually be found. An Iberian Grey Shrike seems to have settled in the same area and we’re hoping it will stay around.

Mediterranean Gull

Stone-curlew

Iberian Grey Shrike

One afternoon we popped across the border into Spain and had a couple of hours birding around Isla Cristina. It’s not somewhere we often go but it made a change. We saw most of the regular wader species and, like almost everywhere else we’ve been this week, one or two Pied Flycatchers and Northern Wheatears.

Northern Wheatear

Today we were at Castro Marim where several Black-necked Grebes were our first since our last visit to Cerro do Bufo.

As we’ve said before: so many birds, so little time!

Sunday Morning

A four-hour walk around the local saltpans certainly gave us an appetite for Sunday lunch but it provided no real surprises among the birds seen. A Kingfisher was probably the least expected among about 45 species recorded. A temperature of no more than 22°C and a slight breeze made for a pleasant morning.

Black-winged Stilt

Pied Avocet

There’s clearly been some breeding success for Kentish Plovers, Black-winged Stilts and Avocets and we saw at least one juvenile Common Redshank but quite a few Avocets in particular do appear to have failed and we could find no Little Tern chicks at all. Ominously, more Yellow-legged Gulls have nested than we have seen in previous years and it may well be that there has been an increased level of predation on eggs and young birds.

Yellow-legged Gull

Other waders included about 100 Black-tailed Godwits, plus a few Dunlin, Curlew Sandpipers, Oystercatchers and a Grey Plover. On the adjacent tidal area there were more Oystercatchers and a few Bar-tailed Godwits, Turnstones, Whimbrels and Curlews. Greater Flamingos continue to increase in number and we found a couple of Spoonbills hiding amongst them.

Greater Flamingos

A flock of about 25 Audouin’s Gulls included a colour-ringed bird that we had seen in almost the same place two years ago. It was ringed in the Ebro Delta in Spain in 2002. Completing the gulls were a few Black-heads and a couple of Meds. Several times recently we have seen two Slender-billed Gulls but there was no sign of them this morning.

Audouin's Gulls

Mediterranean Gulls

Water Water Everywhere!

The monsoon season continues here in the Algarve - rain, rain and more rain, day after day. And it's still pretty windy, too! There's water lying everywhere, fields that just two weeks ago were bone dry are now under several inches of water. The depth of water in many of the local saltpans is now such that only flamingos and Spoonbills can feed in them - even the long-legged waders, Black-winged Stilts and Black-tailed Godwits have moved out into the fields. At high tide today flocks of waders, including Dunlin, Ringed Plovers, Turnstones and Little Stints could be found out in the stubble.

It's certainly not weather that anyone would want to be out birding in. However, we did find a brief window of opportunity today for a drive to some of our regular spots around Tavira and even to take a few photographs before the sky turned black again at about 3.00pm and another thunderstorm rolled in.

Today's photographs are all of common species and were taken in one place, a flooded field at the edge of town.

Common Redshank

Mediterranean Gull

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Black-tailed Godwit

Black-winged Stilt

Meadow Pipit

Mediterranean Gull