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.

Déja vu (again)!

Although they are still regarded as very rare birds in Portugal, the appearance last Thursday of two Little Crakes at Quinta do Lago could hardly be called a surprise.  In fact, their arrival was somewhat predictable given the pattern of occurrences of this species in recent years.  We wrote about it here at this time last year.

Now, once again, we have a male and a female being seen close to the hide that overlooks Lagoa de São Lourenço.  We were there yesterday for about two and a half hours and during that time were able to watch the birds for several minutes and even photograph them, although from quite a distance and in very poor light.

We arrived at the hide half thinking that it might be full of twitchers but then remembered where we were!  As it was, while we were waiting for the Little Crakes to show, we spoke to half a dozen or more people who came into the hide but none of them was even aware that these rarities had been reported.  They certainly showed interest when we told them the story but they all seemed just as keen to see Bluethroat, Glossy Ibis, Little Bittern, Common Snipe, Yellow Wagtail, Purple Swamp-hen, Black-headed Weaver, Cetti’s Warbler and several other species that were frequently visible only a few metres away.  And why not - and what a great place that hide is from which to see such a variety of species so well.  Perhaps the Little Crakes will attract more attention over the weekend but there are plenty of other birds to see while you’re waiting!

Anyway, what we would like to know is this.  Are these Little Crakes the same individuals that have occurred in exactly the same location and circumstances in previous years; where have they come from and where do they breed?  Any suggestions?

Interestingly, there has been a belated report of another Little Crake in the Algarve, at Paúl de Lagos on 5th March, and another was seen yesterday much further north near Óbidos.  If only they weren’t so secretive and such difficult birds to see maybe there would be a few more records not only in Portugal but elsewhere in Western Europe.

Honduras

Peter writes:
I’ve recently returned from Honduras where I was leading the first Avian Adventures tour in what is still a relatively unvisited country as far as European birders are concerned.  Several UK companies now offer tours there but these are mostly short, one-centre trips based at The Lodge at Pico Bonito.  During our tour we spent six nights at Pico Bonito but also travelled south to the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa for two nights and then had two nights at Panacam Lodge in the Cerro Azul Meamber National Park.

Keel-billed Toucan

Honduras covers an area of 112,492 square kilometres; it’s a bit bigger than Portugal and a bit smaller than England.  Its bird list has about 730 species, about the same as neighbouring Guatemala but fewer than the better known Costa Rica and Panama to the south.

Having enjoyed 15 previous birding tours in Central America and seen around 670 species, I wasn’t expecting to see many new birds; my guess was that there would be no more than ten or a dozen ‘lifers’ for me on this trip.  I was more than a little surprised therefore to find that after the first full day birding close to Tegucigalpa, mostly along the entrance road to La Tigra National Park, I had already seen six species that I hadn’t seen before!  These included Green-breasted Mountain-gem, Red-throated Parakeet, Blue-and-white Mockingbird and Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird.

Of course it couldn’t continue at that rate and in the end my original estimate was about right (I finished up with 13 lifers in total) but it was interesting that this area near the capital, which most tours don’t visit, was where I saw around half of the birds that were new to me.

The second area we went to was the Cerro Azul Meambar National Park, which lies just to the east of Lake Yojoa, roughly midway between Tegucigalpa and the country’s second largest city, San Pedro Sula.  Panacam Lodge proved to be an excellent place to spend a couple of nights and we saw lots of birds here, including what for me was probably the ‘bird of the trip’, a Ruddy Crake.  Amongst the other birds seen at the lodge were Black-crested Coquette, Keel-billed Motmot, Mottled Owl, Collared Forest-Falcon, White-bellied Emerald and more Blue-diademed Motmots than I have ever seen anywhere.  Down at the lake, Snail Kites and White-throated Flycatcher were the main attractions among a nice selection of wetland species.

Blue-diademed Motmot

 Snail Kite

The rest of the tour was spent at the very nice Lodge at Pico Bonito, located near La Ceiba on the Caribbean coast.  The lodge is situated between the Corinto and Coloradito rivers at the edge of Pico Bonito National Park and has extensive grounds with forest trails and observation towers that could have kept us occupied for several days without going elsewhere.  Toucans, tanagers, euphonias, hummingbirds, cotingas, woodcreepers, woodpeckers and more - there was always something to see and it wasn't only birds, there were Coatis and Agoutis and several different lizards.  However, like most birders who come here, we also went out on excursions to Cuero y Salado Wildlife Refuge, the Rio Aguan Valley, Rio Santiago Nature Resort and the Lancetilla Botanical Gardens.

Anole Lizard (Norops sp.)

Cuero y Salado was a fun morning involving a short train ride to get to the refuge and then a boat trip through mangrove forest.  The train was a rather old, narrow-gauge affair with just two open carriages.  It was the first time I had been on a train when the driver was not only looking for birds but actually stopped the train so that passengers could see them better.  At one point he even put the train into reverse for a better view of a Bare-throated Tiger-Heron!  From the boat we saw the expected kingfishers and herons but also a Northern Potoo and two White-necked Puffbirds.

Bare-throated Tiger-Heron

 Birding train

 Birding boat

 White-necked Puffbird

Northern Potoo

One of the highlights of the whole tour was the long day out to the Rio Aguan Valley, which required departure from the lodge at 4.00am.  Honduras has only one endemic species, the Honduran Emerald, and this was our only opportunity to see it.  Although it has only a small population and a very restricted range it proved quite easy to find but it was rather eclipsed by the much more interesting Lesser Roadrunner that we found along the same trail!  The day was also memorable for two burst tyres on the Toyota Coaster that we travelled in.  Fortunately, the second one that resulted in us being stranded and having to wait two hours for a rescue vehicle was on the way back and didn’t affect the birding!

Honduran Emerald

Rio Santiago Nature Resort is best known for the dozens of feeders in the gardens which attract a wonderful variety of hummingbird species.  We saw only nine species in the short time we were there but twice that number have been recorded.  There are also trails by the nearby river where we managed a brief glimpse of Sunbitterns.

Rufous-tailed Hummingbird

On the morning of our last day we went to Lancetilla Botanical Gardens about an hour away from Pico Bonito.  We spent only about three hours birding here and barely scratched the surface but it was easy to see its potential and it would have been good to spend more time.  Great Antshrikes, Smoky-brown Woodpecker, Rufous-tailed Jacamars and a Yellow-bellied Tyrannulet were just a few of the birds seen.  For lunch we went to the nearby seaside resort of Tela where Royal Terns and a Magnificent Frigatebird were seen while we were eating.

The beach at Tela

As we travelled around Honduras of course we saw extensive cultivation of sugar cane, palm oil, coffee, bananas and pineapples but agriculture is restricted by the fact that so much of the country is mountainous and this is undoubtedly a country with great biological diversity with much more to see than we could manage during our short tour.   

It’s worth mentioning that it might easily be possible to be put off visiting Honduras by looking at the advice provide by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, which majors on the high levels of crime.  I can honestly say that at no time did I feel nervous, uncomfortable or unsafe and I will have no hesitation in returning there if and when the opportunity arises.  After all there is more to travel and to birding than just ticking off new species - I certainly won’t be expecting many next time.

Thanks are due to James Adams at The Lodge at Pico Bonito and to guides, Alex Alvarado and Santos Calderon for all their help with the tour.

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!

Making our birding count

Although January might not be thought of as the most exciting time of the year for birding in the Algarve, there continue to be a succession of interesting birds to see and plenty of reasons to be out, including the really nice weather.

Red-breasted Flycatcher

The influx of Brent Geese at the start of the month was unusual and caused a bit of a stir but the bird of the winter so far has surely been the Red-breasted Flycatcher, which was first reported on 12th December and still remains at the edge of the golf course at Quinta do Lago.  All previous records of this species in Portugal (fewer than 20) have been in October or November and none of those was reported to have stayed for more than a few days so this one is exceptional.  Living alongside Chiffchaffs and often feeding on the ground, it is obviously finding enough to eat but would probably have been better off heading to India or Pakistan for the winter with the rest of the Red-breasted Flycatcher population.

Other rarities have included a Ring-billed Gull at Lagoa dos Salgados, a Caspian Gull at Quarteira, an American Wigeon between Olhão and Faro and a Red-knobbed Coot at Foz de Almargem.  The last two of these are presumed to be the same birds that spent much of last winter at the same sites.

Slender-billed Gull

 Penduline Tit

Ferruginous Duck

In the ‘interesting and good to see category’ but not rare are several species that are easy to find but localised or here in just small numbers.  These include Penduline Tits, Alpine Accentors, Slender-billed Gulls, Ferruginous Ducks and Black-necked Grebes.

Recently we’ve spent quite a lot of time counting birds.  As usual, we helped out the ICNF with the monthly waterbird count at the Castro Marim Reserve where Greater Flamingos were the most numerous species - there were 1,069 of them!  Next came Black-tailed Godwits (824), Dunlin (795), Avocets (448) and Black-headed Gulls (273).  We get two hours either side of high tide to do this count and we usually need most of that time.

 Kentish Plover

Walking the beach for Project Arenaria

When we went a few days later to survey a stretch of beach just east of Monte Gordo as part of Project Arenaria it was a different story entirely.  This was a low tide count and although we had a long and pleasant walk we saw very few birds.  Based on our experience in previous years we had expected to find a lot of loafing Yellow-legged & Lesser Black-backed Gulls but there were none at all and we found just a handful of Sanderlings and Oystercatchers and a single Kentish Plover.  As part of this survey we are also required to count the number of people on the beach and the number of dogs not on a leash.  The people didn’t quite outnumber the birds but it was a close thing!  Project Arenaria is a survey of the non-estuarine coast.

Last week we were back to high tide counts.  These were at Santa Luzia, Livramento and Fuseta as part of a survey of the entire Ria Formosa organised by the ICNF.  Both Santa Luzia and Fuseta had more than 2,000 birds.  At Fuseta more than half of the birds counted were gulls of five different species; at Santa Luzia there were 15 wader species that made up more than 80% of the total.

Osprey

Last Saturday we devoted the best part of a day to a count of wintering Ospreys that involved more than 130 observers throughout the country.  Surprisingly, at the end of the day, even allowing for some double counting it was estimated that between 71 and 81 birds had been seen with a minimum of ten of those being  in the Algarve.  Although we didn’t see one on the count day in the area that we were allocated, they have definitely become a familiar sight here and we saw one in Tavira yesterday that may well have been missed on Saturday.  No doubt we’ll be seeing more soon as birds start to return from West Africa on their way to Northern Europe.      

Brent Geese

As reported previously, one of the highlights of our birding on New Year’s Day was finding a flock of ten Dark-bellied Brent Geese in the Ria Formosa.  These are birds that breed in Siberia and normally spend the winter in Western Europe, mainly in the south of England, northern France and the Dutch/German Wadden Sea.  It was surprising therefore to find these in southern Portugal and the species is rightly considered to be a rarity here.

Dark-bellied Brent Goose, Lagoa dos Salgados, 07/01/2015

We now know that these ten geese seen near Faro are only part of the story and that there has been quite an influx of Brents into Portugal in the past few weeks.  There was a single bird in the Estuário do Cavado in the north of the country as early as 27th October and there were a few reported further south around Peniche and Lagoa de Óbidos early in December but it wasn’t until after Christmas that it became clear that something a bit unusual was going on with birds at the Ria de Aveiro, Lagoa de Óbidos, Lagoa de Albufeira and the Estuário do Sado.  In the Algarve, there have been birds in the Ria Alvor (5) and at Lagoa dos Salgados (1) as well as those in the Ria Formosa.

Because birds may be moving around it is difficult to be precise about how many of them there have been but Gonçalo Elías has collated the records and estimated the total to date to be between 62 and 82.  Although recent winters have seen small numbers of Brents arriving in Portugal, there hasn’t been an influx on this scale since 1991/92 when 110 birds were reported here, 73 of them in the Ria de Aveiro.

Dark-bellied Brent Goose, Lagoa dos Salgados, 07/01/2015

What is interesting and has been drawn to our attention by Edmund Mackrill, who has been counting and ageing Brent Geese in Lincolnshire for almost 30 years, is that the 1991/92 influx and this latest one follow particularly successful breeding seasons.  Is there a connection, we wonder?

It has been suggested that breeding success in the tundra is connected to the 4-year Lemming cycle.  This may be the result of predators such as Arctic Foxes switching to eat eggs and young birds in years when Lemming numbers are low.  If that is so, one might almost say that the occurrence of Brent Geese in Portugal is at least loosely correlated with the breeding of a small, furry rodent in the Arctic - not something that would readily spring to mind!

You can find out more about Dark-bellied Brent Geese here, here and here.  You can see here a short clip showing an adult and three young birds at the Lagoa de Albufeira, which apart from anything else demonstrates just how approachable these geese can be and this has been a feature mentioned by observers elsewhere.  It was certainly true of the bird at Lagoa dos Salgados that we saw on 7th January.

It would be very interesting during the coming days and weeks, if any birders seeing Brent Geese here in Portugal could age them and perhaps determine brood sizes and then post details in a comment here on the blog.

Close...but no cigar!

Yesterday we were in the Algarve to see the start of 2015 and we enjoyed an excellent day’s birding as we attempted to beat our previous best New Year’s Day species total.  That record was set in 2010 when we managed to find 106 species during a day spent mostly at Ludo, Quinta do Lago, Castro Marim and Tavira.

This is not the sort of birding that we usually do; mostly we prefer a more relaxed approach, but once in a while we like to demonstrate just how good birding in the Algarve can be in ‘winter’.  It’s not about getting the year list off to a good start, either - we don’t keep a year list - it’s just a bit of fun!

The weather can make a huge difference to the outcome of days like this and we could hardly have wished for better.  Admittedly it was cold when we left home at 6.45am and there was frost on the ground when we arrived at Ludo but we didn’t see a cloud all day and later the temperature reached a toasty 17ºC.

Our plan had been to follow more or less the same route that had brought reasonable success in 2010 but then came a remarkable report of five species of hirundines being seen at Parque Ambiental de Vilamoura on New Year’s Eve.  Hirundines are pretty scarce here currently.  In fact we have seen only Crag Martins in recent weeks.  Surely we couldn’t resist the possibility of five species that would be a substantial boost to our total. 

And so it was that after spending most of the morning at Ludo, Quinta do Lago and Praia de Faro, instead of heading back east, we decided to go further west to Vilamoura.  This ruled out any chance that we might have time to go to Castro Marim, which is actually one of our favourite sites; there were a couple of species at least that we might have found there that we were now unlikely to see.  Still, we reckoned, Vilamoura and the hirundines were a better bet.

As it turned out, we did see species at Vilamoura that we probably wouldn’t have seen elsewhere, notably Penduline Tit and Ferruginous Duck, but we didn’t see any hirundines whatsoever!  With the benefit of hindsight, the time spent driving there and the time that it took to walk to the further of the two hides might perhaps have been better spent elsewhere.  Maybe we might have found some of those species that we think of as being common but which simply don’t put in an appearance on days like this when you particularly want them.  We’re talking here about the likes of Linnet, Teal, Golden Plover, Iberian Grey Shrike and Stone-curlew all of which we have seen in recent days but failed to find yesterday. 

After leaving Vilamoura we visited several of our favourite sites close to Olhão and then finished the day around Santa Luzia and Tavira where we knew we could easily and quickly find Audouin’s Gull, Slender-billed Gull, Bluethroat, Black-necked Grebe, Greenshank and Red-legged Partridge but wrongly thought we would find Stone-curlew.

We finished the day having seen 105 species, just one short of our record.  We might have stayed out longer and looked for a Barn Owl or even an Eagle Owl but we reckoned that if we could be out all day and not see a Linnet, the chances of seeing another owl were probably slim!  And, anyway, we weren’t in a competition, we were just out enjoying ourselves.

The highlight of our day was finding a flock of 10 Brent Geese in the Ria Formosa.  This species is a rarity here and it was the first time we had seen them in the Algarve. 

It would be nice to think that one year we might improve on our record from 2010.  There are probably about 30 more species here in the Eastern Algarve that we might have seen, some of which would have been easy given another couple of hours.  The main limiting factor on New Year’s Day is the extent of territory that can reasonably be covered in the relatively short hours of available daylight.  The key, therefore, is in the planning and perhaps also in not allowing yourself to be diverted from the plan in the hope of seeing hirundines at Vilamoura! 

Over the past few years we’ve been lucky enough to spend New Year’s Day birding in Costa Rica, Cuba, South Africa, Texas, Arizona, Florida and California but on a beautiful day like yesterday the Algarve stands comparison with any of these.