Algarve Autumn Update

After our trip to Bulgaria we had only a few days in the UK before we returned to the Algarve.  We expected October to be a busy month and it certainly was!

October is always a month that produces rarities in the Algarve.  This year has been no exception although the suspicion must be that several of them are birds that have returned for at least a second visit here.  Surely this must be the case for the Rock Pipit at Porto do Baleeira, the Ring-necked Duck(s) at the ETAR de Vilamoura and probably the Marsh Sandpiper at Marinha do Grelha.  Still, it’s always good to see old friends.

Rock Pipit

Most photographed bird of the month (judged from appearances on Facebook) must be a Snow Bunting that was a surprise find at Alvor that gained many admirers.  As well as being a particularly attractive bird, this is not an easy species to see in the Algarve, one we have seen here only once, back in 2012.

Snow Bunting - this one from 2012

Also much photographed eventually was an American Golden Plover at Quinta de Marim although when we went to follow up on the initial report we were the only ones there – a typical Algarve twitch!  Interest in it did increase in subsequent days and it was present for at least two weeks.

American Golden Plover

Possibly the most surprising rarity has been the single Pink-footed Goose that was first seen mid-month.  This was the first of this species recorded in the Algarve and it has remained in the Sagres area at least until the end of the month but has sometimes been elusive.

A couple of Olive-backed Pipits have been seen and several Yellow-browed Warblers, encouraging us to look carefully at the numerous Meadow Pipits and Phylloscopus warblers that have been arriving even though those two rarities are probably more likely to be identified by their calls.

At this time of year there is a tendency for rarities to be found in the Sagres area in the extreme south-west.  At least in part this is probably the result of an increased number of birders in that area during the migration season.  The annual birdwatching festival brings visitors from far and wide with raptors being the particular attraction.  More than 20 raptor species were reported during the month including Golden, Bonelli’s & Spanish Imperial Eagles and Rüppell's Vultures.  We saw about 400 Griffon Vultures during one of our visits there but only from such a distance that any Rüppell's amongst them were impossible to pick out.

Griffon Vultures

This has been the first autumn for several years when we haven’t managed to take a boat trip to look for seabirds.  Reports suggest that it hasn’t been a vintage year for seabird passage but the Long-tailed Skua photographed on 12th October and the Sabine’s Gull on the 18th would both certainly have been nice to see.  Many of those who have ventured out to sea have been rewarded with some excellent cetaceans including Fin & Humpback Whales.  As it is, we have had to content ourselves with watching distant Cory’s & Balearic Shearwaters from the cliff top at Cabo de São Vicente.

In the past, our friends from Belvide Ringers in the UK have trapped and ringed a few rarities here during their annual autumn visits.  Common Yellowthroat, Aquatic & Paddyfield Warblers and Common Rosefinches spring immediately to mind!  This year they were here for two weeks, one spent as usual in the Parque Ambiental de Vilamoura and the other spent ringing waders at Quinta de Marim.  We spent several hours with them at both locations and although there were no rarities it was as always educational to see so many birds at close quarters.

 Wryneck

Penduline Tit

When we haven’t been guiding we’ve spent time birding around our local patch, the Tavira/Santa Luzia saltpans.  It’s not unusual to see 20 or more wader species during a visit here as well as six gull species and at least two terns.  There have been hundreds of Audouin’s Gulls, many of them with colour rings and we have reported quite a few.  Most have been birds from the Algarve breeding colony on the Ilha da Barreta but we have also seen ART8, a bird ringed in 2005 on the Isla de Alborán in Spain that we have now seen about a dozen times over the years.   The number of Slender-billed Gulls also increases year after year - it’s amazing to think that only quite recently this species was treated as a rarity in Portugal!  If ever people we meet here suggest they’re not keen on gulls we try to convert them by showing readily identifiable and attractive Slender-billed & Audouin’s Gulls.

 Greenshank

 Spotted Redshank

 Whimbrel

 Ruddy Turnstone

 Slender-billed Gull

Audouin's Gull

Reservoir at Álvares - almost dry!

We’ve also had a couple of trips to see Great Bustards in the Castro Verde area.  Visiting this area has underlined the fact that the southern part of Portugal is suffering from a severe drought.  A favourite site, the reservoir at Álvares that stores water to irrigate a huge olive plantation is currently reduced to just a small ‘puddle’ and passing by the Barragem de Odeleite, on the way north, we saw the water level there lower than we have ever seen it.  And this is the reservoir that supplies mains water to most of the Eastern Algarve.  We really do need to have a seriously wet winter!  Something to look forward to?

Piscivore party

An unusual concentration of fish trapped in one of the salt pans here in Tavira has been attracting numerous birds these past few mornings. Up to 80 Spoonbills and about 50 Little Egrets have been joined by smaller numbers of Cormorants, Grey Herons, White Storks and a single Great Egret.

The fish seem to have been of a size to suit these larger birds but both Caspian & Sandwich Terns have been joining in and have presumably been able to find some smaller ones. Gulls, too, have been looking for a cheap meal, a few Lesser Black-backs but mostly Slender-billed and Black-headed.

It’s not an ideal site for photography but it has been hard to resist trying to get some images. I used a Canon EOS 7D Mk ll with a 100-400mm lens and a 1.4x extender but would have liked to get closer.

It was no surprise to find that some of the Spoonbills were colour-ringed but the depth of the water made it difficult to record the details. As so often, taking the ring details from the photographs was the best plan.  Full details are still awaited of the five birds reported but it looks as though three were ringed in The Netherlands and one each in France and Portugal.  One of the Dutch birds we have actually seen here before in 2011 and 2013; it's a female ringed in 1999.

No doubt some of these Spoonbills will stay in the Algarve for the winter but many will find their way to Mauritania and Senegal.

Birding mostly around Tavira

For much of the last week or so our birding has been restricted to our local patch - the Tavira and Santa Luzia area.  With most of the time spent around the saltpans and along the edge of the Ria Formosa it’s not surprising that we have seen mainly wetland birds.

 Tavira saltpans

 Santa Luzia saltpans

Estrada das 4 Aguas - roadworks are still unfinished and

birding here will never be quite the same again

There are only relatively few Greater Flamingos here now and Spoonbill numbers have also dropped as birds have continued their migration south into Africa.  However, after a period of absence, White Storks are now quite numerous and there are plenty of Little Egrets and Grey Herons to be seen.

Little Egret

Wader numbers have also fallen but there continues to be a good variety of species although for some reason, Golden Plovers have been conspicuous by their absence.

Common Greenshank

Numbers of Stone-curlews seem to be fewer than in some previous years but at least 20 birds are regularly present.  Sadly, the area that they have usually favoured continues to be subject to disturbance and disruption.

Stone-curlew

It’s still easy enough to find six species of gulls in the area but the flock of 500 Mediterranean Gulls that we were seeing earlier in the month seem to have moved on.  However, we counted 50 Slender-billed on the 18th November, which is an increase.

Slender-billed Gull 

We expect to find Caspian Terns and Sandwich Terns at this time of year but a Little Tern has also been seen on a couple of occasions.  A few Little Terns usually spend the winter in the mouth of the Guadiana River but otherwise they are normally gone from the Algarve by the end of October.

Even more surprising was the Whiskered Tern that we found, also on the 18th and seen for at least the following two days.  This is easily our latest ever record and only our second in November.

Whiskered Tern

The low bushes around the saltpans provide insect food for numerous Chiffchaffs, Zitting Cisticolas, Sardinian Warblers; Stonechats are common and it’s not hard to find a Bluethroat or two.

Sardinian Warbler

Raptors seen in the last few days have been Black-winged Kite, Hen Harrier, Marsh Harrier and Common Kestrel. 

Yesterday, by way of a change, we spent a couple of hours in the morning at the wastewater lagoons near Faro, tempted by a report of a Terek Sandpiper being seen there the previous day.  A light northerly wind has dropped the temperature here in recent days (to a maximum of about 18ºC) but it was a very pleasant, sunny morning.

 Northen Pintail

 Peregrine Falcon

 Eurasian Wigeon

We didn’t find a Terek Sandpiper but can hardly say we came away disappointed when we saw Peregrine Falcon, Marsh Harrier, Glossy Ibis (20+), Spotted Redshank, Greenshank, Green Sandpiper, Common Snipe (c.6), Common Sandpiper (c.12), Black-winged Stilt (c.15), Spoonbills, Greater Flamingos, Water Pipit, Bluethroat and Audouin’s Gull, plus hundreds of Gadwall, Shoveler, Pintail and Wigeon and more than 50 Cormorants.  We particularly enjoyed watching the Peregrine as it flushed more and more ducks from unseen ponds in the surrounding area.   

Back for the autumn migration

It’s great to be back in the Algarve!  The months of June, July and August in the UK didn’t seem to include summer but now at last we’re warm again.

It’s also good to be back in Tavira - nearly all of the guide books describe it as the most attractive town in the Algarve and we wouldn’t disagree with that.

The Gilão River in the centre of Tavira

Already we’ve spent a few hours checking out nearby areas of the Ria Formosa and it’s wonderful to have this huge wetland virtually on our doorstep.  Those saltpans around Tavira and Santa Luzia that aren’t being used to produce salt are currently attracting hundreds of birds: Greater Flamingos, Grey Herons, Little Egrets, Spoonbills, more than 20 wader species, at least five different gulls as well as various ducks. 

Santa Luzia saltpans

September and October are months when we can expect a few rarities to show up amongst the huge numbers of migrant birds that pour in here and already there have been a couple of Pectoral Sandpipers further west at Lagoa dos Salgados.  It can’t be denied that rarities add a bit of spice to our birding but there’s a great deal of interest and pleasure to be had from watching almost any birds especially those waders!

 We hope to share photographs here in the coming weeks of at least one or two rarities but in the meantime here are a few taken this week just down the road in the area we like to think of as “our office”.

 Juvenile Greater Flamingo

 Black-tailed Godwit

 Ruff

 First-winter Slender-billed Gull

 Common Redshank

Hoopoe

Two days in Doñana

We can always find more than enough in Portugal to keep us interested and occupied but now and again we do like to pop across the border into Spain, usually to the Doñana area in Andalucía.

It takes only a two-hour drive from Tavira before we can be through Villamanrique de la Condesa and heading for the Dehesa de Abajo or to the José Antonio Valverde Visitor Centre.  We usually see a few bird species in Doñana that are seldom found in the Algarve or that occur in Doñana more frequently or in greater numbers than they do here but as much as anything it’s nice to have a change of scene occasionally.

 Doñana has huge numbers of Glossy Ibises

Our visits to Doñana are usually day trips, which limits how far we can travel so it was nice this week to have a two-day trip over there with an overnight stay in El Rocío.  This gave us time to have a look at sites that we have been to less often and some we haven’t visited for quite a while.

We saw exactly 100 species over the two days.  The highlights were probably White-headed Duck and Red-knobbed Coot, simply because they are birds that don’t occur very often in the Algarve but it was good to see our first Northern Wheatear, Sedge Warbler and Collared Pratincole of the year and to hear our first Nightingale and Savi’s Warbler. 

Red-knobbed Coot

Another highlight was to look out of the window of our hotel room and see Greater Flamingos, Spoonbills, Glossy Ibises, Common & Red-crested Pochards, Northern Shovelers and Black-tailed Godwits.  We fell asleep to the ‘honking’ calls of Flamingos and the croaking of frogs!  The shallow lagoon and marshes right beside the village of El Rocío make a marvellous sight at this time of year with countless hundreds of birds.  It does seem strange that the place is best known for the annual pilgrimage that attracts one million or more people in May every year.  The object of the pilgrimage is a 13th-century statue of the Virgen Del Rocío and you can read more about it here.  Suffice to stay that it is a date that is always in our diary…as a time to stay well away from the area!

 Ermita de la Virgen del Rocío

 Las Marismas Del Rocío

The view from our hotel room

Close to El Rocío is the La Rocina Visitor Centre where the boardwalk trail known as the Sendero Charco de Boca was well worth the visit and nearby the Palacio del Acebrón has an interesting exhibition depicting the history of rural life in the Doñana area.

 Palacio del Acebrón

Inside the Palacio...

...and on the roof

Taking the little ferry across the Rio Guadalquivir, we made the long drive to the Bonanza saltpans and the Laguna Tarelo and we also managed to spend an hour or two at La Dehesa de Abajo Visitor Centre where it’s nice that you can now get food and drink.

 Bonanza saltpans

Other than Great Flamingos, Slender-billed Gulls were the most numerous species at Bonanza

La Dehesa de Abajo has a huge breeding colony of White Storks

Two days were better than one but still nowhere near enough to fully explore this wonderful area.