Back in the Algarve at last!

We’ve been back in the Algarve for just a week now and seem to have timed our return quite well.  The weather is very pleasant but no longer uncomfortably hot, children have returned to school and birds are migrating!

 Short-toed Eagle

Already we have been to Castro Marim, Ludo, Quinta do Lago, Parque Ambiental de Vilamoura, Lagoa dos Salgados (twice) and Sagres (twice) and seen more than 120 species.

Castro Marim, usually one of our favourite reserves, proved to be something of a disappointment.  There are plenty of birds there, particularly in the Cerro do Bufo sector but with access to the site restricted it is difficult to get close to many of them.  Highlights were Black-necked Grebes, Audouin’s & Slender-billed Gulls and of course there are hundreds of waders and Greater Flamingos but a telescope was definitely a necessity.  The salt harvest is in progress and it looks to have been a productive season.

 Salt harvest and Black-tailed Godwits

 Juvenile Greater Flamingo

Dunlin

There was also much salt-related activity at Ludo.  As so often, it was raptors there that proved most popular with five Booted Eagles putting on a show and a single female Marsh Harrier quartering the reedbed.

Booted Eagle

At Quinta do Lago, Little Bitterns were the stars.  We saw seven or maybe eight different birds.  A Water Rail showed well; a juvenile Black-crowned Night-Heron and a Whiskered Tern were unexpected treats.  We lost count of the number of Western Swamphens but nine of them were together, completely in the open on the golf course; two Glossy Ibises took off and left before we had much chance to look at them.  Five species of gulls were on the lagoa de São Lourenço and two or three Kingfishers were chasing each other about.

Lagoa de São Lourenço from the hide

The Parque Ambiental de Vilamoura has become a favourite place at this time of the year and it didn’t disappoint – it was full of birds!  Most numerous were Willow Warblers and Chiffchaffs and Yellow Wagtails with one or two Northern Wheatears and Pied Flycatchers but we know from past experience that all sorts of rarities can and do turn up here at this time of year.  We will be back for another look very soon.  A Black-winged Kite here was reasonably approachable.

Northern Wheatear

The water level at Lagoa dos Salgados was lower than we would have liked but still there were impressive numbers of birds.  Notable were a Marsh Harrier, an Osprey, a Black-winged Kite, at least four different Bluethroats, a Little Bittern, several Western Swamphens and what appeared to be a thunbergi-type Yellow Wagtail.  Waders included Little Stint, Bar-tailed & Black-tailed Godwits, Common Snipe and Wood Sandpiper.  We searched through hundreds of gulls without finding anything other than fuscus, michahellis and ridibundus.  Glossy Ibises were especially numerous and on our first visit we estimated that there might have been as many as 1,000.  We managed to read colour-rings on several of them, which identified their origins as breeding sites near Sevilla and Huelva in Andalucia.  Two colour-ringed Spoonbills had travelled further – one from France and one from the Netherlands.

 Common Snipe

 Lagoa dos Salgados

Glossy Ibis

Both of our trips to Sagres produced reasonable numbers of raptors and importantly there were good, close views of many of them.  Most numerous were Black Kites (31 on the first visit, slightly fewer the second time).  Also seen were Egyptian Vultures, Short-toed Eagles, Booted Eagles, Honey-buzzards, Common Kestrels, a Sparrowhawk, a Goshawk and a Peregrine Falcon.  Two Black Storks came close overhead.  We saw just a single Little Bustard and a couple of Red-billed Choughs, while migrants included a Wryneck, several juvenile Woodchat Shrikes, Common Redstarts, both Pied & Spotted Flycatchers, Whinchats and Northern Wheatears.

 Egyptian Vulture

 Black Stork

Little Bustard

So, not a bad start (for us) to the autumn migration period and still more than enough places to visit. 
 

Fuerteventura - 2

During our week on Fuerteventura we were based at Caleta de Fuste, a tourist resort situated only about 10km from the airport and no more than an hour’s drive from any of the birding sites we planned to visit.  It proved to be a good choice.

We had prepared for the trip by reading various tour reports published on the internet and by talking to friends who had been to the island.  We took with us Finding Birds in The Canaries by Dave Gosney and A Birdwatchers' Guide to the Canary Islands by David Collins and Tony Clarke both of which proved helpful.

We particularly wanted to see ten species that would be new for us: Fuerteventura Chat, Houbara Bustard, Plain Swift, Barbary Falcon, Barbary Partridge, African Blue Tit, Berthelot’s Pipit, Canary Islands Chiffchaff, Trumpeter Finch and Atlantic Canary.  In the event, we managed to find nine of them.  Some sources suggest that the Canary doesn’t even occur on Fuerteventura and we might now be inclined to agree with that!

We also wanted to try and photograph Cream-coloured Courser, Black-bellied Sandgrouse and Lesser Short-toed Lark.

 Cream-coloured Courser

 Black-bellied Sandgrouse

Lesser Short-toed Lark - subspecies polatzeki

We went twice to the reservoir at Los Molinos, where Ruddy Shelducks outnumbered all other birds put together!  We counted about 200 of them.  Unfortunately, the high water level resulted in very little shoreline for waders but this was one of the places we saw Fuerteventura Chat and Egyptian Vulture and we also had good views of the dacotiae race of Common Kestrel and the insularum race of Common Buzzard.

 Los Molinos Reservoir

 Ruddy Shelducks

Common Kestrel - subspecies dacotiae

Egyptian Vultures - subspecies majorensis

We made two visits to the plains around Tindaya and La Oliva.  On the first occasion we saw Houbara Bustard, Cream-coloured Courser and Black-bellied Sandgrouse.  They all took a bit of finding and the birding was ‘hard work’ but we enjoyed it so much that we went back there on our last day simply for a second helping!

Houbara Bustard - subspecies fuertaventurae

The water level at the Las Peñitas reservoir was also very high and it was hardly worth going there.  However, on the walk along the mainly dry river bed we did see a Grey Wagtail and our first African Blue Tit.  Nearby we spent some time in the attractive little town of Betancuria.  Founded in 1404 this was the original capital of the Kingdom of the Canary Islands and while there we slipped into ‘tourist mode’ for a short while.  It was also there that we had our best views of African Blue Tit and we also saw Canary Islands Chiffchaff and Monarch butterflies.

 Iglesia Catedral de Santa Maria de Betancuria

 African Blue Tit - subspecies degener

 Monarch Butterfly

More from us about Fuerteventura to come shortly...

Vultures

An African White-backed Vulture (Gyps africanus) seen at the Estação Biológica do Garducho, near Mourão on 24th August is just the second record of this species for Portugal and only the fifth for Europe.

African White-backed Vulture (Tanzania)

It was seen at one of the vulture feeding stations set up in that part of Eastern Alentejo by the LIFE Lince Abutre project, which aims to contribute to the improvement of the survival, feeding and breeding conditions of the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) and the Cinereous or European Black Vulture (Aegypius monachus) in southeast Portugal but also benefits several other threatened species.

European Black Vulture (Portugal)

Only three weeks earlier, there was a remarkable report of five Rüppell’s Griffon Vultures (Gyps rueppelli), another African species, also in the Eastern Alentejo.  Sightings of Rüppell’s Griffons in ones and twos have become regular in Portugal and Spain in recent years, most of them at Tarifa and Sagres, with some speculation about how many different individuals might be involved, so the occurrence of five together was very interesting.

Rüppell’s Griffon (Ethiopia)

It is assumed that Rüppell’s Griffons and now White-backed Vultures mix with wintering Eurasian Griffons (Gyps fulvus) in West Africa, and then come to Europe with them.  Rüppell’s has also tried to breed in Iberia, in hybrid pairings with Eurasian Griffons, but to date there has not been any evidence of success.

Eurasian Griffon (Portugal)

Last year a Rüppell’s Griffon was wing-tagged in Portugal, and was subsequently seen in France and Spain, confirming that these birds range widely across the continent.

So now we have six species of vultures to look out for: European Black, Eurasian Griffon, Rüppell’s Griffon, Egyptian (Neophron percnopterus), African White-backed and Lammergeier (Gypaetus barbatus).  Lammergeiers haven’t been seen here for a very long time but they have been re-introduced in Spain and individuals are known from satellite-tracking to have occasionally crossed the border to fly unseen over Portugal.

Egyptian Vultures (Ethiopia)

It is timely that we are writing about vultures as the first Saturday in September each year is International Vulture Awareness Day.  It also gives us an opportunity to draw attention once again to the on-line petition to ban the use in Europe of diclofenac, the drug that has been responsible for wiping out huge numbers of vultures in India, Pakistan and Nepal.  You can read more about that here and here you can donate towards efforts being made by Birdlife International to save vultures in Europe and Africa from the fate that has befallen so many in Asia.

Vultures need our help!

West and East

Thursday was devoted to a trip out to the west: Cape St Vincent, Vale Santo, Sagres, etc. although it was another sunny, cloudless day again there was a chilly wind.

We began at the lighthouse where we quickly found a Blue rock Thrush and several Black Redstarts. We looked hard for Alpine Accentors up to about half a dozen of which have wintered here in the past. Last year our first was on 6th November but there was no sign of them today.
Looking back towards the raptor viewpoint we could see that there were Griffon Vultures in the air so we headed in that direction and eventually saw about 350 of them. There were also a couple of Egyptian Vultures, at least two Black Kites, maybe three Booted Eagles and a Black Stork. We stayed watching them for quite a while during which time at least 10 Short-toed Eagles and 10 Common Buzzards also passed over.

As we headed for Vale Santo, we came across a Ring Ouzel and later we saw three more, one of which at least seemed to be of the race alpestris. Vale Santo had a flock of 400 or more Golden Plovers; at one point they were panicked by two large falcons. Presumably they were Peregrines but we did recall that this was exactly where we once saw a Lanner Falcon. A large area of land had been ploughed and a tractor was still going back and forth with Cattle Egrets, White Storks and White Wagtails the main beneficiaries. There were lots of Meadow Pipits, Skylarks and Thekla Larks. Other birds of note seen during the day were Northern Gannets and a Shag, Crag Martins, Ravens and Red-billed Choughs.

Yesterday we went a short way east and spent the day at Castro Marim. It was far less windy than of late and we enjoyed some excellent birding. In the total of more than 80 species recorded the highlights for us were probably Little Bustards, Lesser Short-toed Larks, Yellow Wagtails and Northern Wheatear (both rather late), Hen Harrier and about 100 Black-necked Grebes. We were also pleased to see the Peregrine Falcon on its usual post. It is difficult, though, to pick highlights out of so many birds.

After several days with little but birding, today was earmarked for catching up on some domestic stuff - shopping, washing, etc. An Egyptian Vulture was seen over Tavira during the morning. Later we did find time to have a couple of hours around the Tavira and Santa Luzia saltpans where we counted 25 Audouin’s Gulls, the Grey Egret was in its usual place and we photographed a few waders. Bird of the afternoon was a Temminck’s Stint that flew in and dropped by the roadside. It quickly walked into water that almost covered its legs but you can just see that they are yellow.

Temminck's Stint