Vilamoura

Details of the birds trapped and ringed at Vilamoura last month by Colin McShane's group from the UK are now presented on the website of Brewood Ringers. The total number of birds ringed was more than 1200, a similar total to the last two years, although year on year comparisons are made less meaningful by the variation in ringing effort (i.e. the number of nets used) and by the slight changes in the timing of their visits. This year they were here for a week from 30th September, whereas last year their week was from 14th October and this will no doubt account at least in part for the difference in, for example, the numbers of Blackcaps (258 in 2008, 44 this year) and Willow Warblers (19 in 2008, 116 this year) that were trapped .

Colin's report again emphasises the importance of the Parque Ambiental for migrant and wintering birds from Northern Europe. There were recoveries this year of Reed Warblers that had been ringed in Holland, Bluethroats from Holland and Belgium and a Chiffchaff from the Channel Island of Jersey. In previous years they have trapped Reed Warblers, Blackcaps and a Bluethroat that had been ringed in France, Germany and the UK and these are just a tiny sample of the thousands of birds that rely on this site every year. Vilamoura's extensive reedbeds are also recognised as an important breeding area for species such as Little Bittern, Purple Heron and Purple Swamp-hen.

Purple Heron

Purple Swamp-hen

Unfortunately, all this is now under threat from further huge tourist development. Environmental group Almargem (Association for the Defence of the Algarve’s Cultural and Environmental Heritage) are threatening to submit an official complaint to the European Courts should the country's new Environment Minister approve the construction of a proposed project in Vilamoura named ‘Lacustre City’. While Almargem hopes that the arrival of the new Environment Minister will result in a re-evaluation of the project’s Environmental Impact Assessment, it has warned that failure to do so could ultimately result in legal action against the Government. Like several other sites in the Algarve, what little is left of Vilamoura's wildlife habitat should long ago have been designated a Special Protection Area under the EU Wild Birds Directive. It would be a tragedy to see it buried by yet more hotels and tourist resorts but based on what has gone before, we can't be optimistic.

It's ironic that this week the Algarve Tourism Board has announced its plan to promote the area as a birdwatching destination!

That Was The Week...

It’s been another busy week!

On Monday we made a rare visit to Quinta de Marim, location of the Ria Formosa visitor centre. From the somewhat dilapidated hides a selection of common ducks and waders could be seen and from the roof of the tidal mill (currently closed) we saw distant Spoonbills and Caspian Terns. A plan was recently announced by the Instituto de Conservação da Natureza e Biodiversidade (ICNB) which will see a much-needed investment of around 1 million Euros in this site over the next 18 months and we are told that by the spring of 2011 it will have been transformed. We look forward to it! A change that has already been made is the transfer of management of the wildlife rescue centre from ICNB to a private organisation, Aldeia

Our trip to Castro Marim on Tuesday produced 70 species most of which could have been predicted beforehand. They included Bluethroat (one of our favourites!), Slender-billed and Audouin’s Gulls and half a dozen Little Bustards but the highlight was a Booted Eagle that gave close views from several different perches after apparently bathing in the fresh water marsh. On a pleasantly warm and sunny morning it didn’t take long to dry out. Black-headed Gulls were feeding on olives, something we have seen on several previous occasions here and elsewhere. This feeding behaviour was reported from Greece several years ago and we wonder how widespread it is.

Black-headed Gulls

An excellent day in the Alentejo on Wednesday produced 70 or more Great Bustards but only a handful of Little Bustards. Black-bellied Sandgrouse were very obliging and we saw plenty of Griffon Vultures but the raptors were mostly Red Kites and Common Buzzards with only the odd Black-shouldered Kite. We saw our first Cranes of the ‘winter’ - at the time our estimate was of 300 birds but photographs have since shown that there were actually only 295!

Common Cranes

Red Kite

Common Buzzard

Thursday was our day off from birding but there was time for some photography around Tavira. The local Bluethroats are still not co-operating fully but a Zitting Cisticola and a Sardinian Warbler provided a couple of pleasing images. How many Sardinian Warbler images do we think we might need?

Zitting Cisticola

Sardinian Warbler

Friday saw us at Quinta do Lago and Ludo. A female (or perhaps juvenile) Common Scoter was a surprise here - it was preening continuously and looked as though it was probably oiled. Otherwise, it was the regular Glossy Ibis, Purple Swamp-hen, etc and in the afternoon a nice selection of raptors: Osprey, Booted Eagle, Black-shouldered Kite, Marsh Harrier and Common Buzzard.

Common Scoter

Today we checked on a few of the local birds around Tavira. Chiffchaffs are now here in big numbers and lots of Blackcaps are singing from the olive trees. Everywhere remains very dry and none of the little ponds where we did such a lot of photography at this time last year have any water. The 10-day weather forecast suggests the possibility of a shower of rain next Tuesday but otherwise it looks set to continue 'mostly sunny' with temperatures up to 21/22°C. Probably we shouldn't complain!

Griffons and Gulls

The weather here remains dry but temperatures are falling and today’s forecast maximum is ‘only’ 21° C. For a few days now a strong wind has been a feature.

Yesterday morning from the window here on the outskirts of Tavira we watched for half an hour or so a group of 15 Griffon Vultures struggling to make headway in the wind. We don’t often see Griffons at this eastern end of the coast but we also saw two last week near Castro Marim. Presumably these are young birds that are gradually and inexpertly finding their way to the Tarifa area for the short crossing to North Africa.


We now have hundreds of gulls on the local saltpans. Six species are involved and it’s not difficult to see them all together. Lesser Black-backs are the most numerous and at the other end of the scale there are just a handful of Slender-billed Gulls.







We were very pleased earlier this year when SPEA announced at last that they would no longer be treating Slender-billed Gull as a rarity requiring a description to be submitted with our records. With an expanding population in Iberia, the species has not been a rarity in Portugal for several years now but it is regular only here in the south-eastern corner of the country. As these decisions are made in far away Lisbon where Slender-billed is hardly if ever seen it has taken time for its true status to be acknowledged. In 2008 we found more than 70 individuals on 23 different dates and we are now seeing them most days.

The Last Few Days...

For us, highlights of the last week or so in the Eastern Algarve have been a Black Kite and more than 20 Slender-billed Gulls at Castro Marim, three Black-crowned Night-Herons and about 60 Stone-curlews just outside Tavira and two Penduline Tits and two Griffon Vultures near the Spanish border.

We’ve spent quite a lot of time sitting in the car photographing waders and we’ve also been trying to get some better shots of the local Bluethroats. There seem to be three or possibly four different Bluethroats in quite a small area but so far they have ignored the perch we provided for them, leaving it to a very obliging Sardinian Warbler to pose on.






The weather has taken a turn for the autumnal, temperatures still 20° and above but for a few days now we have regularly had a stiff breeze blowing. Yesterday we made the long trip out to Cape St Vincent (which seems to have a climate of its own!) and suffered a wet and windy morning there before retreating back to Alvor and then to Lagoa dos Salgados where the weather was much better.

From the lighthouse we watched countless Northen Gannets passing just offshore, the majority of them adults, gleaming white against the grey sea. A few Cory’s Shearwaters also went by. Before the weather closed in completely we did see a couple of distant Griffon Vultures, a handful of Common Buzzards and a Hen Harrier but really it wasn’t a morning for raptor passage. Four Ring Ouzels were probably the 'best' birds seen.

At Alvor there was a selection of the usual common wader species, a Water Pipit and just a single Greater Flamingo. A Water Rail was making a lot of noise but typically remained hidden.

Lagoa dos Salgados has recently been drained again but still had a decent number of birds to offer. A Peregrine Falcon was sat on a post in the middle of the dry lagoon, a Marsh Harrier was patrolling and what appeared to be a late female Montagu’s Harrier was also hunting along the far shore. There were about 20 each of Spoonbills and Cormorants and at least 50 Grey Herons. Other than a flock of 30 or so Northern Lapwings there were just a few waders including a single Golden Plover.

Pretty Flamingo?

Do you remember that Manfred Mann song? From 1966?

“When she moves she walks so fine like a flamingo…When she walks by she brightens up the neighbourhood…”



Of course, not everyone sees them like that. Apparently there is no evidence that Lewis Carroll did recreational drugs but having Alice play croquet with a live flamingo as a mallet (and hedgehogs as the balls) shows that at the very least he had a particularly creative mind. It seems clear that he thought flamingos to be a somewhat comical species and regarded them as figures of fun. For him they obviously didn't bring to mind a girl who was "out of reach and out of sight".


There are not many surreal laughs of the Alice in Wonderland kind in the Concise Birds of the Western Palearctic and here the description of Greater Flamingo uses the words ‘graceful’ and ‘grotesque’ in the same sentence. Grotesque might just be taking things a bit far but you can see where they were coming from.

Here in Tavira now we've got hundreds of Greater Flamingos. They're here for the winter and they make a fine sight, particularly in flight when seen against a clear blue sky.


Back in 1979 a pop group called The Monks were one-hit wonders with a song that wasn’t about flamingos at all but which we reckon summed them up nicely. It was called Nice Legs Shame About The Face!

Old Friends

These last three days we've had multiple visits to Castro Marim and to the Tavira and Santa Luzia saltpans. As a result and not surprisingly we've been seeing the same birds - that's not just the same species, we mean the same individuals.

Some individuals are easily recognised. Yesterday, for instance we saw both of the local hybrid 'grey egrets' that have been in the Tavira area for several years. They each have their favourite feeding areas and can be found most days without too much effort. They're like old friends.

Presumed hybrid Western Reef Egret x Little Egret

Colour-ringed birds are another obvious example of individuals that can be easily recognised. We're currently looking for a Black-tailed Godwit that has been on the saltpans here during the last three winters. We're hoping it has survived to return.

Black-tailed Godwit

There's currently a Black-tailed Godwit at Santa Luzia that has a damaged leg and can therefore be identified as an individual. It feeds in exactly the same place day after day. The likelihood is that the other Godwits feeding with it are also repeatedly using the same small area - not just day after day but perhaps, year after year.

Each year we find wintering Bluethroats in the exactly the same small patch of vegetation, Caspian Terns on the same saltpan, Stone-curlews in the same field. How many of them are, we wonder, like the colour-ringed Godwit, individuals returning to places they know to be safe and to have a good supply of food? And, of course, it's not only the repeated use of wintering sites, for birds heading for sub-Saharan Africa it's reliance on the same stopover sites for 're-fuelling'.

Bluethroat

So then there is the question of what happens to migrant birds such as these when the places they know and rely on are changed from one year to the next. What happens to the bird that flies hundreds of miles and arrives tired and hungry to find that its familiar reedbed has been destroyed, its usual wetland drained, a golf course where that stubble field used to be? Some will no doubt be able to adapt, to find another site, but for some it will be the difference between surviving or not.

Alentejo day

It was quality rather than quantity today as we made our first visit for some time to the Castro Verde area.

As always in the Alentejo, Great Bustards were a prime target and during the day we found 40 or more without too much difficulty. The first ones were a long way off, shimmering in the heat haze, but eventually we saw some at reasonably close range and had good telescope views.

Remarkably, we saw Great Bustards, a Golden Eagle, about 20 Eurasian Griffons, two Black Vultures and several Black-bellied Sandgrouse all from the same vantage point. The vultures were on a sheep carcass with several Common Ravens in attendance. All this was enjoyed with the sweet song of a Woodlark in the background, at times the only sound to be heard - definitely a 'cosmic birding experience'.

It was quite a good day for raptors - apart from those already mentioned we saw mostly Red Kites and Common Buzzards but we did get first class views of a Bonelli's Eagle, not an everyday occurrence. The only Little Bustards of the day were ones that were flushed by the Bonelli's Eagle although Red-legged Partridges seemed to be its main target.

Not a long species list but some first class birding in a beautiful area and with wonderful, sunny but not too warm weather.