Raptors galore!

We’ve had another excellent week’s birding.  Again we’ve been to the Castro Verde area and across the border to Doñana as well as to most of the best sites in the Algarve.

It’s been a great time for raptors and we have seen an amazing 20 species in the space of five days.  These were Eagles (6), Falcons (5), Harriers (3), Kites (2), Vultures (2), Sparrowhawk and Common Buzzard.

Bonelli's Eagle

The standout species among those were a Steppe Eagle and a Pallid Harrier but Eleonora’s Falcon and Merlin are also species that we don’t see very often.  Somehow we managed to miss seeing any Ospreys!

The Steppe Eagle is presumably the same bird that was first reported in the Baixo Alentejo at the end of August and has been seen several times since then.  We found it near Entradas in the company of two immature Spanish Imperial Eagles on the ground at a carcass.  It isn’t a species that one would expect to see in Portugal and already doubts have been expressed about its origin.

Steppe Eagle with two Spanish Imperial Eagles

The Pallid Harrier on the other hand is a bird that no longer comes as a surprise here.  The first record for Portugal was as recently as 2011 but there have been records annually since then.  We had good views of one near Cabranosa which was our first here.

Passerine migration continues, of course.  Robins, Blackcaps and Meadow Pipits have become noticeably more numerous in the past week or so while Whinchats, Northern Wheatears, Pied Flycatchers and others are now fewer.  Not surprisingly, there have been quite a few Yellow-browed Warblers, a species that looks set to lose its status as a rarity here as it has in the UK.

Pied Flycatcher

In the Alentejo, we found four Mute Swans at Alvares where previously there had been only two.  We hear that since our last visit there these birds have been joined by two Black Swans!  One can only speculate as to the origin of these birds and hope that they soon move on!  It’s been good to see the increasing number of Green Sandpipers and Common Snipe at this site and at similar small reservoirs in the area.

Common Snipe

Lagoa dos Salgados continues to hold hundreds of birds with the water level a little lower now than it was a month ago.  A particular feature there recently has been the number of Glossy Ibises, which at times has reached 500 or more.  A couple of Marsh Harriers regularly cause panic amongst the many ducks, gulls and waders.  Bluethroats are now a frequent sight.  We saw both Black & Caspian Terns during our last visit.

Glossy Ibis

Quinta do Lago is also a site that seldom disappoints.  The Purple Swamp-hens and Little Bitterns there are always popular and the Black-headed Weavers frequently come as a surprise to first-time visitors.  The hide there provides an opportunity to sit and actually watch birds and also to show them to the non-birders who regularly look in.  Who knows when helping someone see a Kingfisher through our Swarovski 'scope will add another recruit to our hobby/obsession!

Little Bittern

Greylag Geese

After our previous disappointing trip to Doñana we waited before going again until there had been rain.  We were rewarded this time with good numbers of birds, particularly at Dehesa de Abajo.  We failed to locate the dozen or so Common Cranes that had been reported but we did see our first Greylag Geese of the season, which were also very recent arrivals.  The adult Spanish Imperial Eagle that we saw last time was again perched on a pylon in the same area.

Autumn update

Some heavy rain today has put a stop to birding activity and so gives us a chance to report on the past two weeks.  It has to be said that the rain is much needed and welcome unless, of course, you have just arrived here for a holiday!

We’ve had two further trips to Sagres where we have been lucky to see a good selection of raptors with a Lesser Spotted Eagle being the star bird.  This species was first reported in Portugal in 2009 and was also seen in 2011, 2012 and 2013.  All of these records have come in the autumn from the Sagres area so this year’s bird wasn’t a complete surprise.  It was seen over a period of several days.

During the time we have spent at Cabranosa, the popular viewpoint, we have seen around a dozen other raptor species and quite a number of Black Storks - counting birds here isn’t an exact science as they circle around the area, going out of sight and then re-appearing.

Black Stork

There were also been plenty of passerine migrants in the Sagres area.  We saw Ortolan Buntings, Northern Wheatears, Pied & Spotted Flycatchers, Yellow Wagtails, Common Redstarts and a decent selection of common warbler species.  We also found a few Choughs.

Northern Wheatear

Red-billed Chough

An afternoon boat trip on 2nd October produced good numbers of seabirds.  We estimated 300 Cory’s and 50 Great Shearwaters but no more than a handful of Balearics and just three Sooty Shearwaters.  A couple of Great Skuas came close to the boat and about 10 European Storm-petrels were counted.  There was just one brief sighting of a Wilson’s Storm-petrel.  Gannets were surprisingly few.

Cory's Shearwater

Great Shearwater

European Storm-petrel

We’ve also been in the Castro Verde area a couple of times.  On both occasions we saw four eagle species (Spanish Imperial, Golden, Bonelli’s & Short-toed) while other raptors have included Griffon & Black Vultures, Black-winged Kite, Red Kite and Hen Harrier.  The biggest surprise was to see two Mute Swans on a small reservoir near Alvares, the first time we have seen this species in Portugal other than as ornamental birds on golf courses.  Where they have come from is anyone’s guess!

Mute Swans

In the Algarve we have made multiple visits to Lagoa dos Salgados where we watched 500 Glossy Ibis flying into roost one evening and where we helped a couple of people who were understandably struggling to identify a Fulvous Whistling Duck that couldn’t be found in their field guide - another bird of unknown origin!  The star bird here though was a White-winged Tern, seen in the company of a Black Tern for instant comparison.

We made two trips to see the team of ringers from the UK who were at the Parque Ambiental de Vilamoura for their ninth annual visit.  No major rarities were caught this time but it’s always instructive to see birds in the hand and we met up with old friends.  A full report on the week’s ringing should appear in due course on their website.  Ferruginous Ducks, Booted Eagles and a Black-crowned Night Heron were species seen there but not ringed!

 Cetti's Warbler

Ferruginous Duck

A Temminck’s Stint near Faro was probably the highlight amongst the many waders we have seen recently.  Although not a rarity in the strict sense, it’s a species that we have seen less often here than some that we do have to submit a description for!

Temminck's Stint

Needless to say, we have also been birding around Tavira and Santa Luzia, at Ludo and Quinta do Lago, at Olhão and at Castro Marim and, of course, we have been reading and reporting colour-rings.  

Both ends and some in the middle

We chose to make our base here in Tavira not just because it's the most attractive town in the Algarve but also because its geographical location gives us easy access to quite a number of good birding sites not too far away. We can also easily make trips to the Alentejo to the north and to Doñana across the border in Spain.  However, it’s a long way from Sagres and at this time of the year there's no denying that it is the Sagres area in the extreme west of the Algarve that has the greatest potential when it comes to seeing migrating raptors and it is also the place to see Red-billed Choughs, Dotterels and scarce passerines such as Ortolan Buntings.

On Wednesday of this week we made our first trip of the autumn to Sagres.  The lighthouse at Cape St. Vincent is the southwesternmost tip of mainland Europe and to get there from Tavira requires a drive of 150km each way.  It's a journey that we will no doubt be making on several occasions in the coming weeks.  We are grateful for the A22 Via do Infante de Sagres, the motorway that takes us most of the way there although like most people here we do rather resent paying the tolls that were introduced in 2011!

Our first birding of the day was in a small wooded area not far from the town of Sagres where in the trees we quickly found both Pied & Spotted Flycatchers, a Subalpine Warbler and several Chiffchaffs, while overhead a pale morph Booted Eagle circled.  This was certainly a promising start and we were encouraged to think that there might be more migrants to come as we made our along the peninsula towards the lighthouse.

Just then the phone announced the arrival of a text message!  At times like this when you are in a remote part of the Algarve you hope it's going to be a message urging you to shop at one of the local supermarkets, Jumbo or Continente, but no, instead it was news we didn’t really want.  A rarity, a Marsh Sandpiper, had been found at Castro Marim, a two-hour drive away near the border with Spain.  What could we do about it?  There was only one thing to do - ignore it!

We carried on birding, checking out the coastal bushes and finding a Wryneck, a couple of Whinchats, more Chiffchaffs and a Willow Warbler. A Blue Rock Thrush was perched on a ruin.  We saw Rock Doves and Black Redstart on the cliffs, an Iberian Grey Shrike and a couple of Ortolan Buntings but sadly there was little in the way of seabird passage other than some very distant Gannets and Cory's Shearwaters.

Eventually we made it to Cabranosa, the popular raptor watch point, where a small group of birders were gathered, some of them well known to us.  Apparently there had been a few Honey Buzzards earlier and it wasn't long before we saw two or three more Booted Eagles and a Common Buzzard but clearly it wasn't looking like a great day for raptor passage.  We stopped there for half an hour or so during which time we were rewarded with a Short-toed Eagle directly overhead, an Egyptian Vulture and briefly a Honey Buzzard but then we decided that our time would be better spent elsewhere.

Lagoa dos Salgados

We headed for Lagoa dos Salgados, one of the Algarve’s best birding sites, confident that we would find more birds there.  It is a much more reliable area these days but in spite of all the work that has been carried out in the last year or two there is still room for further improvement.  In particular it would be nice to see better control over the water level which was somewhat higher than we might have wanted with little or no muddy margins showing.  However, there are some small pools of shallow water suitable for waders and we soon found the two Pectoral Sandpipers that have been there for two weeks or more. With them were Curlew, Green & Wood Sandpipers, a Little Stint, Dunlins and several Ruffs.  On the islands there were hundreds of loafing Yellow-legged Gulls and a few Cormorants; Spoonbills, Glossy Ibises, a Greater Flamingo and a couple of Purple Swamp-hens were also soon found. A Northern Wheatear flew down the track ahead of us, perching from time to time on a fence post.

From Salgados we went to spend the last hour of the birding day at Quinta do Lago. From the hide there we watched Little Bitterns, Purple Swamp-hens, Black-headed Weavers, Kingfishers, Little & Great Crested Grebes and a flock of gulls that included a few Meds and a dozen or more Audouin's.  We were in the hide watching a dispute between two Little Bitterns when one of them broke away and flew a short distance landing in the lagoon.  It then proceeded to swim to the nearest stand of rushes about 20/25 metres away.  We have never before seen a Little Bittern take to the water and swim like this and it isn’t something that we can find recorded in the literature.  We have found a report of a Little Bittern swimming on a canal near Exeter in the UK in March 2002 but that was a bird that was said to be in very poor condition and it died the following day after being taken into care.  Our bird appeared to be perfectly healthy and as far as we could tell resumed its normal activity once out of the water.

 Great Crested Grebe

 Little Bittern

Marsh Sandpiper

The following morning there was only one place we were going to be and that was Castro Marim where the Marsh Sandpiper was easily located in a mixed flock of waders that included Black-tailed Godwits, Avocets, Common Redshanks, Dunlins and Ringed Plovers.  Although it’s classed as a rarity, Marsh Sandpiper occurs here most years and Castro Marim is the most likely place to find one.  It must be possible that some records have involved birds returning in successive years although that’s hard to prove.  An Osprey and several Caspian Terns were also present.

Last week's birding

We're now settled back into our routine here in the Algarve and we've just  enjoyed an excellent week of birding. Migrants are on the move, it's been a particularly good week to see eagles and there's been much more besides.

Spanish Imperial Eagle

Our two visits to the Castro Verde area in the Baixo Alentejo gave us multiple sightings of Short-toed, Bonelli's, Golden & Spanish Imperial Eagles - enough to make anyone's day!  It would have been nice to have come across the Steppe Eagle that has recently been reported but maybe that was too much to ask for.  Other raptors we did see up there included Black-winged Kites, Griffon Vultures and Eurasian Black Vultures so there were no complaints.

 Short-toed Eagle

As usual at this time of the year, Great Bustards were relatively few and we failed to find any Little Bustards at all.  In an area where hundreds of them nest, there wasn't a White Stork to be seen but we watched a party of seven Black Storks over São Marcos da Ataboeira.  Most of the summer visitors such as Golden Orioles, Collared Pratincoles, Bee-eaters and Rollers have left but a couple of Black-eared Wheatears remained.

After a scorching hot summer the plains are baked dry and for many birds food must be scarce.  Most of the rivers and streams are now dry but there are quite a number of ponds and small reservoirs that still contain some water.  Green Sandpipers and Common Snipe winter around these reservoirs and both species are already in residence. A few passage waders also occur at these waters and we found Dunlin, Common Sandpiper, Greenshank and Ringed Plover.  We also saw Greater Flamingos and Spoonbills which somehow seem a little out of place here away from the coastal wetlands.

 Spoonbills

The eagles we saw in the Algarve were of course Booted Eagles, several of them at a regular site with two Black-winged Kites roosting nearby.  At Quinta do Lago, Little Bitterns, Glossy Ibises and Purple Swamp-hens were easy to see and a Water Rail made a brief appearance.  At Santa Luzia a juvenile Red-necked Phalarope brought to 25 the number of wader species recorded during the week; Audouin's & Slender-billed Gulls were also there.  At Olhão there were Mediterranean Gulls plus Caspian, Little, Common & Sandwich Terns and near Tavira we found what is presumed to be a hybrid Little x Western Reef Egret, a bird that has been in the area for several weeks.

  Booted Eagle

 Audouin's Gull

Red-necked Phalarope

Presumed hybrid Little x Western Reef Egret

An adult Spanish Imperial Eagle was our main reward for making the long trip to the Doñana area in neighbouring Spain.  There were also several Booted Eagles.  Again here it was a matter of finding some water in order to find a few birds as the whole place was parched dry and unrecognisable compared to how we see it in the spring and early summer. A few Black Storks, Great Egrets and Night Herons were seen as well as numerous Grey Herons, Cattle & Little Egrets but apart from Green Sandpipers and Black-winged Stilts there few waders and the day was generally disappointing.

Spanish Imperial Eagle

Everywhere we have been there have been at least a few passerine migrants, including Common Whitethroat, Northern Wheatears, Whinchats, Tawny Pipits, Pied  & Spotted Flycatchers, Chiffchaffs, Willow & Subalpine Warblers and Common Redstarts and we can expect more of the same during the coming weeks.  Maybe this will be the year for another North American passerine - we can but hope!

 Tawny Pipit

Whinchat

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

Birdfair 2015

Last weekend saw the 27th British Birdwatching Fair held at Rutland Water and as usual we were there!

Tim Appleton, co-founder of the event, reports another record attendance this year and almost certainly a record amount of money raised for conservation.

This year’s fundraising project was ‘Hope for migratory birds in the Eastern Mediterranean: action against illegal killing’. The aim of the project is to reduce the scale and impact of illegal killing of migratory birds, and to improve protection and laws throughout the region.

The recent publication by BirdLife International of a report on this issue has emphasised the need for some urgent action to be taken; it estimates that around 25 million birds are illegally killed annually in the Mediterranean area with Egypt, Italy, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Greece and France topping the list of offending countries.

Patricia Zurita, CEO of BirdLife International

It is somewhat ironic that the first Birdfair in 1989 raised funds for the ‘Stop the Massacre’ campaign which focused on the killing of migrant birds in Malta. We don’t seem to have made much progress! Malta’s absence from the current list of worst offenders is simply a result of its small size.

What we all have to do!

We spent all three days on the Avian Adventures stand promoting the company’s programme of overseas birding and wildlife tours and also taking every opportunity to talk about the birds of the Algarve. It was great to meet so many people who have been birding with us in Portugal and elsewhere.

As well as being very enjoyable and tiring, being on a stand at the Birdfair can also be a frustrating experience. There are so many things to see, binoculars, telescopes and cameras to try out, books to browse, countless talks and presentations to go to, so many old friends to catch up with, celebrities to spot and there’s even a wonderful bird reserve! The problem is that we just don’t have enough free time to get around. The result is that we come away knowing that once again we have seen only a small fraction of who and what was there.

Chris Packham, Bill Oddie, Simon King, David Lindo, Nick Baker 

and Mike Dilger were among the celebs we identified

 We were in the same marquee as both Wildsounds and Subbuteo - very tempting!

 Marco and Paco from Cotinga Tours - they will be 

arranging our tour in Costa Rica next February

Our long-time friend Steve Cale was amongst the team of artists 

working on the traditional Birdfair mural

Guto Carvalho from Brazil was our new neighbour for three days in Marquee 3

One very obvious change this year from previous Birdfairs was the catering. A range of different outlets offered an excellent variety of foods and it was possible to get served rather quicker than previously. We heard some complaints about the prices and the lack of vegetarian options but most agreed that there was an overall improvement.

 Cook Street by MPM Catering

Beechdean Farmhouse Dairy Ice Cream - their 1953 Morris Commercial van started life as an ambulance

And so, we look forward to the next Birdfair - 19th to 21st August 2016. The dates are already in the diary and maybe we should plan to have half a day off the stand!