Castro Marim & Tavira

After a period when we were frequently at Ludo, Quinta do Lago, Vilamoura and other sites to the west, all of our birding this past week has been either at Castro Marim or around the Tavira/Santa Luzia area.  Although there were a couple of days with reasonably early starts it has mostly been at a pretty relaxed pace and we’ve spent quite a few hours cooped up in the car trying to take photographs.  Still we have managed to see more than 100 species.

For visitors who have been with us the birds which seem to have brought the most pleasure have been Little Bustards, the two regular Ospreys, Bluethroats, Purple Swamp-hens and Great Spotted Cuckoos.  There has also been some enthusiasm for the gulls, particularly Audouin’s and Slender-billed but also Mediterranean.

Little Bustard

 Bluethroat

Audouin's & Lesser Black-backed Gulls

For us the highlight was probably the Wood Sandpiper at Castro Marim, which by a few days was our earliest record of this species.  It was also good to find Little Ringed Plovers birds that we don’t often see in February.  These two brought the total of wader species seen during the week to an impressive 26.

 Little Ringed Plover

Northern Lapwing

The arrival of increasing numbers of hirundines encourages us to think that the migration season is now upon us.  House Martins are inspecting what’s left of last year’s nests on buildings in the town centre; Barn Swallows are everywhere and a few Red-rumped Swallows are also appearing.  It should be only a couple of weeks before the first Woodchat Shrikes return and by then we should also have seen Yellow Wagtails.  Spring is surely just around the corner!

Just Being Sociable

We were fortunate in 2009 to travel to The Gambia, Tanzania, Colombia, the Caribbean, Arizona, Texas and California, all of them visits for the sole purpose of watching birds. And, of course, we spent many weeks in Portugal with occasional cross-border excursions into Spain. Heaven knows how many species we saw during the year but it was quite a lot!

Although the year list includes many highlights, one bird that gave us particular pleasure was the Sociable Lapwing that we found in the Alentejo just before Christmas. So much so that, three weeks on, we thought it would be nice if we could go and find it again, spend some more time watching it and take a few more photographs.

Sociable Lapwing is a species that is listed by the IUCN as Critically Endangered because its population has undergone a very rapid reduction. It breeds in northern and central Kazakhstan and south-central Russia, normally migrating to spend the winter in Israel, Syria, Eritrea, Sudan and north-west India, occasionally in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Oman. No wonder then that the bird we found near Benviuda is only the ninth that has been recorded in Portugal - quite simply it is a long way from where it should be.

From its plumage it is a bird in its first winter and therefore with no previous experience of migration. The explanation for it appearing in the Alentejo seems to be that instead of migrating with other Sociable Lapwings it has joined up with flocks of Northern Lapwings and travelled west with them. Many of the thousands of Northern Lapwings currently wintering in the Alentejo, and the many Golden Plovers that are with them, have probably moved further this winter than they usually do because of the extreme weather that has been affecting much of Europe. These are some of our favourite birds and seeing them in such large numbers meant that a trip to the Alentejo was always going to be worthwhile whether or not we re-located the Sociable Lapwing.


In the event, we had another great day. We saw Great Bustards, Little Bustards, Common Cranes, two Spanish Imperial Eagles and much more...and we found the Sociable Lapwing in almost exactly the same spot that we first saw it. How long will it stay, we wonder? Long enough for us to pay it another social call during the next few weeks, we hope!

Doxey Marshes

The return from a trip to Austria of Peter’s telescope and binoculars coincided this morning with the sun shining over nearby Doxey Marshes. It was an opportunity to see how the newly-repaired optics would perform and perhaps also to find some migrants.

We spent a couple of hours wandering across the reserve, twice popping into the only hide to dodge the showers. From a birding point of view it was predictably unproductive with just 33 species recorded but it was good to see more than 100 Lapwings and a dozen or so Common Snipe. Given the date and seeing the reports of passage waders down the road at Belvide Reservoir, we really might have expected to see more. However, for some reason management of water levels on the reserve seems to be a problem again and both ‘wader scrapes’ had way too much water on them to be of much use – one even had a Great Crested Grebe diving in it! We did think earlier in the year that this long-running problem had been resolved but obviously this isn’t the case. Very disappointing!

Northern Lapwing

As usual Canada Geese were overwhelmingly the most numerous species – we counted more than 350 – and at least eight Barnacle Geese were also present. A couple of Lesser Black-backs were amongst the many Black-headed Gulls and the ducks included a few Tufted, Shoveler and Teal – all pretty unexciting.

The 'Scrape', Doxey Marshes

A Common Buzzard and two Kestrels were probably the morning’s highlights and it didn’t take too long for attention to turn to photography.

Comma butterfly

Hoverfly - Helophilus pendulus

The main thing is that Swarovski have done a good job sorting out the optics and it will only be a few days now before some quality birding in California (Peter) and Portugal (June).

---------------------------

It was sad to read this morning of the death of Mrs Marion Paton of Patagonia, Arizona. Almost anyone who has been birding in SE Arizona in the last 20 years or so will have visited Birders’ Haven or Patons’ yard as it became known. This is probably the most famous of all the birdwatching gardens in the USA and one that our Avian Adventures tour visited again as recently as May this year. Mrs Paton and her late husband, Wally, generously allowed birders to just walk in through their gate and sit down in front of a row of feeders at the rear of the house to watch the wonderful selection of hummingbirds, finches, buntings, orioles, woodpeckers and more. As someone has already written elsewhere, the Patons typified all that is good about birding and will be sadly missed.