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.  

Recent highlights...

So what exactly constitutes a highlight?  Well, the Aquatic Warbler that was ringed at Vilamoura on 12th October was the first of that species in the Algarve since 2005, it was the first that either of us had seen in Portugal and it was the first that June had seen anywhere.  That was probably enough to make it the highlight of that day and possibly also the highlight of the month!

Aquatic Warbler

Very often at the end of a day’s birding one of us will ask the question: what was your bird of the day?  The answers are sometimes surprising but just as often there will be a standout candidate that we agree on.  Maybe it will be that we have witnessed some unusual behaviour.  Sometimes it will be a common bird that we have seen somewhere unexpected or out of season.  Occasionally it will be a single bird that has brightened an otherwise mundane day.  Frequently it will be a bird that has given particular pleasure to someone who has been with us, maybe a bird that we ourselves take for granted.

An example in the last few days would be the single female Great Bustard that we eventually found in the Castro Verde area at 5.30pm in the late afternoon after searching all day.  Great Bustards can be difficult to find at this time of the year and on a day when it seemed that every farmer in the Baixo Alentejo was out ploughing and there was disturbance everywhere, it seemed that our 100% record in finding this species was in serious danger.  The bird that saved our bacon was definitely a candidate for ‘bird of the day’.

If that Great Bustard was ‘bird of the day’, then ‘species of the day’ was definitely Spanish Imperial Eagle.  Never have we seen quite so many of them!  Although, to be fair, we don’t know how many different individuals we saw.  On at least five occasions during the day, we got out of the car and looked up to see two or sometimes even three of these magnificent birds.  We were often able to watch them for several minutes and on one occasion were close enough to hear the harsh, barking call of one.

Spanish Imperial Eagle

Recently we spent a day doing survey work for the Atlas of Wintering & Migratory Birds.  We always say that Atlas work gets us into areas where we probably wouldn’t otherwise go and that’s true.  Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily a good thing!  We were out all day, visited six widely separated tetrads and saw no more than about 35 species in total.  Eventually, we got to some water where we found as many as five Green Sandpipers.  After counting so many Corn Buntings and Azure-winged Magpies, Green Sandpipers were definitely that day’s highlight even if we do see them most days at this time of year.

Green Sandpiper

Purple Swamp-hens are common at several sites here and hard to miss at Quinta do Lago.  Finding them here in the Eastern Algarve is a different story!  We have about half a dozen sites east of Tavira where we have seen them but few are reliable and easily accessible.  So it’s been good these last couple of weeks to have one that has been easy to get to and co-operative.  When you rely on being able to show birds to people, these things are important!

Purple Swamp-hen

On several occasions, at the same site, we have also seen one or more Ferruginous Ducks, a species unusual enough in these parts to be a highlight some days, whereas it probably wouldn’t be if seen at one of the more regular sites such as the Parque Ambiental de Vilamoura.

Ferruginous Duck

Little Bittern is a species that we have seen in every month of the year at Quinta do Lago.  Sometimes they are hard to find, sometimes they are hard to miss but always they are popular.  This one posed for several minutes in front of the hide, illuminated by perfect late afternoon sunshine, and brought real pleasure to those few who were there to enjoy it.

Little Bittern

In the category of unusual behaviour, we recently watched a Black-winged Kite that was apparently ‘fly-catching’, making short flights from the top of a small dead tree presumably to take dragonflies or similar before returning each time to the same perch, much in the manner of a Spotted Flycatcher.  It continued like this for all of ten minutes.  We are seeing Black-winged Kites with increasing frequency but can’t recall seeing this feeding method before.

Currently we have a reasonably reliable Water Rail that we can sometimes to show to people and several Bluethroats are now established in winter territories around Tavira.  Any one of these birds that performs when required is potentially the day’s highlight!
 

Bluethroat

A Mixed Bag of Birding

It continues to be dry and sunny here with temperatures rising as high as 18º C most days. It’s a little over two weeks since we returned to the Algarve after our tours in Ethiopia and the USA and during that time we have seen mainly clear blue skies. That kind of weather makes it hard to resist going out birding and there have been only a couple of days when we have even thought about resisting! There's been guiding, survey work and lots more...

Yesterday we spent the whole day working on our Atlas square, carrying out timed counts of the birds in six different tetrads. That’s the Atlas Aves Invernantes e Migradoras or Atlas of Wintering and Migratory Birds, a project co-ordinated by SPEA which started last August and will continue until February 2013.

Our survey area is a 10km square in the rolling hills north of Tavira. It’s not far away and there are parts of it that we have regularly driven through, but we haven’t really done much birding there until now. Visiting and birding in new areas are the bonuses that come from atlas survey work.

Green Sandpiper – one of four wader species that we found along a short stretch of the Ribeira de Beliche

Spanish Festoon – just one of several butterfly species seen yesterday

Earlier in the week there was a cross border trip to the Doñana area, the highlight of which was finding a really wet and muddy ricefield that was just teeming with birds. There were thousands of waders of at least ten species plus Glossy Ibises, Yellow and White Wagtails, Little Egrets, Purple Swamp-hens, Meadow Pipits and probably more. Nearby, La Cañada de Rianzuela was also full of birds but otherwise much of Doñana was very dry and rather birdless. It’s a bit ironic that the birdiest area should be outside the National Park!

Little Ringed Plover – many were seen in the flooded ricefield and there was one in our Atlas square

We spent one morning last week near Castro Marim helping to make artificial flamingo nests. They have been sited in a protected area where there is no public access and the idea, which has been successful elsewhere, is that such nests might stimulate some of the Greater Flamingos that occur there to stay and breed. There was an unsuccessful nesting attempt at Lagoa dos Salgados in 2010 that was widely reported as being the first in the Algarve but there is actually a record of successful breeding at Castro Marim in 1987. Maybe they will try again...

Making mud pies to encourage Flamingos to nest!

Otherwise we’ve been birding at the regular sites along the Algarve coast. We were pleased to find that the two long-staying Snow Buntings were still in more or less the same spot along the beach at Vila Real de Santo António where they were first seen before Christmas. Debate continues concerning their subspecific identity!

Nivalis or insulae? You decide!

At Vilamoura we were able to find only four Ferruginous Ducks but there have been reports recently of as many as 17 of them there.

Ferruginous Duck

Short-eared Owls continue at the Tavira saltpans but it has been a while since we saw more than two of them.

Short-eared Owl

Mediterranean Gulls have been a feature of the saltpans at Olhão. More than 200 of them were counted this week including several with colour-rings, birds originating from France and Belgium it seems. There are also two pairs of Common Shelducks displaying there, a species that appears to be increasing in number in the Algarve.

Mediterranean Gull

In the last few days we’ve also seen a Dutch-ringed Black-tailed Godwit, both French- and Spanish-ringed Greater Flamingos and a ‘rescued’ Yellow-legged Gull that acquired its colour-ring here in the Algarve at the Centro de Recuperacao e Investigacao de Animais Selvagens where it was presumably treated successfully.

Dutch Black-tailed Godwit