Projecto Arenaria 2015/16

Earlier this week, we spent a morning counting the waders and gulls along the Algarve’s easternmost stretch of beach near Monte Gordo.  We walked from the Guadiana River to Praia Verde, a distance of about 7km and then back again to the car.  We were taking part in Projecto Arenaria, a survey of the birds of Portugal’s non-estuarine coast.

Looking west towards Monte Gordo

Gulls feeding on the falling tide

We have taken part in Projecto Arenaria in previous years and blogged about it here, here, here and here.  It is similar to the BTO’s Non-Estuarine Waterbird Survey, which grew out of the Winter Shorebird Count of 1984/85 but it has been difficult to think of any day this week as winter - in fact, we could hardly have wished for better weather for a walk on the beach.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was warm enough for people to be sunbathing!

Lots of jellyfish on the beach

Based on previous experience it wasn’t a surprise to find that there rather few waders on the beach.  The Ria Formosa and other tidal areas along the Algarve coast provide much better feeding and roosting places than the beaches.  We found just three species: Sanderling (39), Oystercatcher (9) and Kentish Plover (8).  It was disappointing not to find even one Turnstone, the species that gives its name to the survey.

Sanderling

We did, however, find some gulls.  Often they were quite mobile, disturbed by various walkers, joggers and fishermen and they were difficult to count accurately.  We counted each flock that we came across and tried as best we could to avoid including the same birds twice if they moved ahead of us.  In the end, we had a grand total of 1,050, mostly Lesser Black-backs but also a few Yellow-legged.

Lesser Black-backed Gull - ringed in Bath, England in June 2015

Not surprisingly we managed to find five Lesser Black-backs with colour-rings: two from the Channel Islands and one each from England, Holland and Denmark.

Lesser Black-backed Gull - ringed on Alderney in July 2014

We hoped that on the sea we might find some Common Scoters or a Razorbill but it wasn’t to be.  A couple of Cormorants flew by and there were plenty of passing Gannets but we saw no other seabirds.

As well as the birds, we were also required to count people (98), vehicles (2) and any dogs not on a leash (2) but we doubt that any of these had a significant influence on the numbers of birds we saw.

Our contribution to Project Arenaria was our last birding in the Algarve for a while but we hope to be reporting from elsewhere before very long.

Projecto Arenaria 2012/13

Yesterday morning was perfect for a walk on the beach – an almost cloudless sky, the temperature reaching 23ºC and virtually no wind.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t something that seemed to have occurred to anyone else!  We walked for about two and a half hours and saw only four other people, all of them local fishermen wading into the surf.

Ruddy Turnstone (Arenaria interpres)

Of course, we weren’t just out for a walk; once again we were taking part in Projecto Arenaria.  We’ve blogged about it before here and here, so if you’ve been keeping up you’ll know that it is a survey of Portugal’s non-estuarine coastal birds, an attempt to fill a gap in the knowledge of bird populations using the Portuguese coastline.

As previously, we were asked to count birds on the Ilha de Cabanas and, following our plan from last winter, we took a boat to the island rather than risk wading across the channel at low tide.  Thanks again for that to Henrique at Segua Tours.

The birds were unremarkable.  We found one Mediterranean Gull and 11 Audouin’s Gulls among the hundreds of Lesser Black-backs; what few waders there were thankfully included a few Ruddy Turnstones, the species that gives the project its name.

We also found a few Sea Urchins and Jellyfish washed up on the sand.  Mostly we just enjoyed being out on such a beautiful morning on what almost seemed like our own private beach!

Projecto Arenaria 2011/12

Projecto Arenaria (the ‘Turnstone Project’) is a survey of non-estuarine coastal birds here in Portugal that is similar to the Winter Shorebird Count carried out in the UK in 1984/85 by the British Trust for Ornithology. Living at the time in Staffordshire, about as far from the coast as you can be in the UK, Peter was an unlikely volunteer to participate in that survey but that’s what happened with round trips of 300 miles being made to count shorebirds along the coast of North Wales. Madness!

Arenaria began in 2009/10 so this is its third year. Counts have to be made between 1st December and 31st January, a period for most of which we were away in Ethiopia, the UK and the USA, so we weren’t expecting to take part this time. However, we returned last Tuesday to find that there was a stretch of coast not too far away that still hadn’t been surveyed.

Lesser Black-backed Gull

So this morning we walked along the beach from Praia Verde to Cacela Velha and back. It was another beautiful morning with a clear blue sky and temperatures that at times exceeded the forecast 16°C. A three-hour walk in the sun was exactly what we needed! As part of the survey, we counted not just the birds but also the people and any dogs that weren’t on a leash and as it was Saturday there were plenty of both.

By far and away the most numerous bird species was Lesser Black-backed Gull totalling just over 500. There were only a handful of Yellow-legged Gulls and a single Slender-billed. A few Sandwich Terns flew by, Northern Gannets were diving off-shore and just off the beach there was a single Razorbill. Waders were represented only by Kentish Plovers and Sanderlings and there were few of either.

Slender-billed Gull

Sanderling

Single Spoonbill and Cormorant flew over but probably the only real surprise was when a flock of 22 Common Pochards passed over, heading east to and from who knows where.

Will our data be of any use to anyone? Well, of course we hope so but more importantly we enjoyed collecting it and what’s more we didn’t have to drive 300 miles to do it!

Projecto Arenaria

After many years of involvement with bird censuses and surveys in the UK, it was only natural that we would want to take part in Projecto Arenaria, the Portuguese equivalent of the Non-estuarine Coastal Waterbird Survey run by the BTO.

The stretch of coast that we were allocated to cover was on the Ilha de Cabanas, one of several barrier islands that are part of the Ria Formosa. Contrary to what many visiting birders seem to think, the Ria Formosa is a complex of coastal saltwater lagoons and barrier islands, with extensive mudflats, sand banks, dune systems and saltmarshes that covers 16,000 hectares and stretches some 60 kilometres, from Manta Rota in the east to Ancão in the west. It was designated as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention in 1980. It is not just the small area around Quinta de Marim where the visitor centre is located!

The advice we received was that at low tide we could walk across to the Ilha de Cabanas. “It´s very easy to get to the island without getting wet”, said the email; it made no reference to the duration of that window of opportunity, nor the possibility of similarly staying dry when making the return to the mainland! Fortunately, it’s an area that we know pretty well so yesterday we ignored the advice, played safe and used a boat, specifically a water taxi from Cabanas operated by our good friends at Sequa Tours.

Cabanas de Tavira seen from Ilha de Cabanas

Our taxi to the island

There was a cool breeze from the east but the sky was clear and it was a perfect morning for a walk on the beach. As well as counting birds, we were required to count people and it was surprising that in two hours we saw only 14, mostly locals fishing in the surf. It was not so surprising that we found few birds. Our experience is that beaches such as this one generally hold little more than a few Sanderlings and flocks of loafing gulls, while on the food-rich tidal area on the other side of the island you can see hundreds of waders, gulls and terns. Still, we had a job to do and so we walked along the seaward side where Lesser Black-backed Gull (550) was the most numerous species and there were indeed 11 Sanderlings; the highlights were 20 Audouin’s Gulls. We recorded only six of the species that are targeted by Projecto Arenaria but we had a thoroughly enjoyable morning.

We saw 14 people in two hours...

...most of them fishing.

We enjoyed ourselves so much that we quickly volunteered to cover another stretch of beach and this morning saw us walking along the sands from Altura to Castela Velha, just outside and to the east of the Ria Formosa. No worries this time about needing a boat but we certainly needed another layer of clothes as the easterly wind strengthened, there was total cloud cover and the temperature dropped quite sharply. It being Saturday and this being a much more accessible beach, there were more people in evidence (34) but again most of them were fishing. As well as birds and people, we were also asked to count the number of dogs not on a leash; yesterday we saw none at all but today there were four. As for birds, it was a similar story to yesterday with Sanderling and Lesser Black-backed Gull the two most numerous species actually on the beach. However, there were a few more birds offshore, including Northern Gannets and Great Cormorants, a couple of Great Skuas, a dozen or so Sandwich Terns, a Caspian Tern and surprisingly, a flock of 12 Common Shelducks.

Lesser Black-backed Gulls

Sanderlings

So, not great birding but hopefully our results will be a useful small part of the bigger picture put together by Projecto Arenaria; also we got to a couple of places we wouldn’t otherwise have visited and had some much-needed exercise!