Sunday at Castro Marim

Without doubt, Castro Marim is one of our favourite sites in the Algarve and it's one we visit pretty regularly. However, the Reserva Natural do Sapal de Castro Marim e Vila Real de Santo António (to give it its full title) covers a huge area and at this time of year, when the temperature can be approaching 30 degrees by 10.00am, we're not inclined to cover all of it in one day. This morning we gave it about two and a half hours before retreating into some shade.

Although much of that time was spent taking photographs (how many flight shots of Spoonbills do we really need?) and trying to read colour-rings, we managed to dig out about 50 species with minimum effort.



The only real surprise was a Black-crowned Night Heron, a species that seems to be occurring more frequently in the Algarve and will surely be breeding here soon if it isn't already.


Amonst the gulls, we found about a dozen each of Slender-billed and Audouin's. (For some reason, the largest concentration of Audouin's in the area currently is at Santa Luzia where 268 were reported this morning.)

As well as the resident Kentish Plovers, Avocets and Black-winged Stilts, a few returning waders were in evidence including Dunlins and Black-tailed Godwits, a couple of Little Ringed Plovers, a Common Sandpiper and (our favourites) two Green Sandpipers.



Not many raptors were seen but we had several sightings of what was presumably the same male Montagu's Harrier, plus Common Buzzard and Common Kestrel.

One species that we particularly looked for was Common Magpie and eventually we found two rather bedraggled-looking birds. As we had hoped, these Magpies were feeding two well-grown Great Spotted Cuckoos. The Cuckoos looked as though they should have been well capable of fending for themselves, but why would they when their foster parents were so attentive. No wonder the Magpies looked worn out!

Other notables were Woodchat and Southern Grey Shrikes, three Common Ravens, Little Terns, hundreds of Greater Flamingos, Azure-winged Magpies, Common Shelducks and Red-rumped Swallows.

All in all, some pretty decent birding. We are no longer surprised that we didn't see another birder the whole time we were there.

A Tour of the Saltpans

We took ourselves off to Olhão yesterday afternoon. It’s the next large town along the coast to the west of here. We were hoping to see Collared Pratincoles, which we eventually did. Not surprisingly, Kentish Plovers, Little Terns and Black-winged Stilts all seemed to have young around the saltpans and it looked as though a few pairs of Pied Avocets might also have nested.

Little Tern

Black-winged Stilt

With all this breeding going on it was hard to think about ’autumn’ wader passage but there were at least 120 Black-tailed Godwits in the area, plus a couple of Ringed Plovers and presumably these are birds that have returned here from breeding grounds far to the north. Let’s hope they’re not all failed breeders! Later at Santa Luzia we saw more Black-tailed Godwits and two Oystercatchers.

At Santa Luzia there were 26 Audouin’s Gulls. A colour-ring on one of them was easy to read from the photograph, but unfortunately that isn‘t the case with the Spoonbill - one of at least 50 of this species seen at Castro Marim this morning. Also at Castro Marim were yet more Black-tailed Godwits and two Greenshanks but what really had us looking twice at the calendar was the sight of a drake Northern Pintail!

Audouin's Gull

Eurasian Spoonbill

Yesterday we spent a while watching Bee-eaters taking food to nest-holes here in Tavira. There was no possibility of photographing them but this morning at Castro Marim we were able to almost walk up to one.

European Bee-eater

We also managed without much difficulty to photograph a Little Owl in Tavira - presumed, as it was on the same building, to be a bird that was completely unco-operative on a previous visit. That's birds for you!

Little Owl

Colour-ringing

Colour-ringing is a valuable research technique that enables studies to be made that would be impossible using just the usual numbered metal ring. The main and obvious advantage is that a colour-ringed bird can be identified as an individual without the need for it to be re-captured and the ring number read. It follows from this that repeated sightings of a bird will yield much more information than could ever be hoped for from conventional ringing. Some colour-ringing projects involve behavioural research in a restricted area such as detailing the day-to-day activities of particular birds, while others are concerned mainly with movements between areas and following and discovering the timing of seasonal migrations. The website http://www.cr-birding.be/ maintained by Dirk Raes has details of all the European colour-ringing projects and this is our prime source of information.

There are lots of colour-ringed birds here on the Algarve. Over the last few years we’ve seen lots of Greater Flamingos and Spoonbills, several Slender-billed Gulls and Audouin’s Gulls, a Black-tailed Godwit and at least one Black-winged Stilt. More often than not the Flamingos, Spoonbills and gulls are too far away for us to read the rings, while Black-tailed Godwits in particular are nearly always in such deep water that we can’t see whether they have rings or not. Sometimes it requires a lot of time and patience to get the ring details and be sure that it has been read accurately. To be honest, we have to be in the right mood but when we do get ring details and send off a report we are always interested in the response we receive - if we get one! Dirk Raes warns that while some colour-ringing schemes provide swift replies, others don’t reply at all, which we find both surprising and disappointing. It is the feedback we receive that is our motivation for reading and reporting colour rings. We are never going to be in the mood to read rings on some species because we know that we ourselves will never learn anything as a result of reporting them.

Colour-ringed Spoonbill

Recently (27th November) we saw a colour-ringed Spoonbill at Alvor and sent the details to Otto Overdijk in The Netherlands. We had a reply almost immediately. The bird, probably a male, had been ringed as a nestling on 29th May this year in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It was later seen in Denmark (August) and was reported from Lagoa dos Salgados here in the Algarve on 8th October. Thank you Otto for sharing these details and for replying so quickly.