Caspian Tern

The appearance of a Caspian Tern at Rudyard Lake on Friday gave us the possibility of a twitching trip to see a species that neither of us has ever seen in the UK let alone in Staffordshire.  Rudyard Lake is less than 50 miles away and Caspian Tern is a genuinely rare species in the UK; there have been only eight previous records in Staffordshire and this was the first since 1999. 

We didn’t go!

It didn’t take more than a few seconds to realise that there wouldn’t be much sense in spending time and money chasing off to see a species that we can see almost every day in the Algarve.  We do enjoy seeing and watching Caspian Terns but the only reason to have gone would have been to add a tick to a list. 

We realise that we are lucky to be so familiar with Caspian Terns.  In Tavira we sometimes see one come into what is effectively the town centre, fishing in the Gilão River.  Although they don’t breed in the Algarve, there are usually a few to be found throughout the year either in the Ria Formosa or at Castro Marim.  These birds are almost certainly from the breeding population around the Baltic Sea many of which winter in West Africa.  We see them on their way south in the spring and on their way back later in the year but many stay in the Algarve through the winter and a few, presumably sub-adult non-breeders, spend the summer with us.  We know of only one record of a colour-ringed bird in the Algarve: a bird seen by Ray Tipper on 30th September last year at Castro Marim that had been ringed just 91 days earlier as a nestling in Sweden.

Apart from in Portugal, we have also seen Caspian Terns in Finland, Costa Rica, South Africa, various parts of Africa and in several US states - they are widely distributed around the world also breeding in China, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.  It is the world’s largest tern, almost the size of a Lesser Black-backed Gull and its striking large red bill makes it unmistakeable.  

In Britain there have been more records in July than in any other month, which is perhaps a bit surprising.  The assumption is that these birds are also from the Baltic population although there is a record of a bird ringed in North America being found in Yorkshire back in 1939.

Perhaps surprisingly Caspian Tern is regarded as monotypic; as yet there are no recognised sub-species although no doubt someone somewhere will be working on that!  It is reported that birds from North America, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are somewhat smaller than European ones, while birds from South America and Australia average larger.

The Rudyard Lake bird  stayed throughout the weekend and was apparently last seen flying out to the north early on Monday afternoon.

A Morning at Blithfield

After two weeks or so of what we used to think of as normal summer weather the tabloids now have headlines featuring “rocketing temperatures” and “heatwave warnings”, stories about “climate change” and articles about skin cancer!  Yes, it certainly starts to look as though our plan to escape the heat of the Algarve by coming to the UK is a failure.  But then again, perhaps not - forecast high temperatures today in Tavira and Stafford are 28°C and 25°C respectively, hardly a level to cause panic and alarm in either of those places.  We shudder to think what our friends in Tucson (35°) would think about such a reaction to weather we’re sure they would find to be a relief from the genuinely high temperatures they have been experiencing for the past few weeks and which they expect to have at this time of the year.

Anyway, making sure to use sunscreen, wear a hat and take plenty to drink, we spent yesterday morning at Blithfield Reservoir, another of our old stamping grounds in Staffordshire.  Blithfield, like Belvide, now has several new hides which are a great improvement on the old ones but we had forgotten just how far away from the birds several of them are. 

Although in some ways we enjoy the challenge of trying to identify distant waders, it was a bit unsatisfactory to come away from Blithe Bay not knowing for sure whether we really had seen a summer-plumaged Sanderling.  Even at 60x magnification through a Swarovski telescope it was just a dot!  And, while there was no doubt about the identification of spiffy Black-tailed Godwits, there was still no getting over the fact that they were 500 metres or more away and that as a result it was difficult to fully appreciate their finery.  Clearly we have been spoiled by the very close views of waders that we enjoy around Tavira!

A Morning at Belvide

With the temperature in Tavira heading for 30°C it won't come as a surprise to our regular readers that today we were at.....Belvide Reservoir!  Yes, we've escaped the heat (not to mention the crowds) of the Algarve and we're going to be in the UK for the next few weeks.  Next month we'll be at the Rutland Water Birdfair but in the meantime we're hoping to visit as many as possible of our local birding sites in Staffordshire and Worcestershire and maybe we'll have time for some trips further afield. 

It had been quite a while since our last visit to Belvide, which was once regarded as Peter's 'second home' in the days when he was very involved in managing the reserve for the West Midland Bird Club.  It was interesting to see the many changes that have been made there (new hides, storage facilities for plant and machinery, improved rafts for nesting birds, more feeders, even a portaloo on the car park!) but it didn't take long to see (and hear from several birders we met) that quite a few of the long term problems that we struggled with through the 1980s and 1990s still remain.

The birding was unspectacular but amazingly we did see one fairly common species that neither of us had seen before at Belvide, even though Peter had seen one as long ago as 1976 at nearby Blithfield Reservoir.  It was an Egyptian Goose!  Apparently this individual has been in the area for a while and no longer seemed of much interest to the regular Belvide birders.  We were also pleased with a Common Redstart, Tree Sparrows and juvenile Great Spotted Woodpeckers on the feeders and a nice selection of butterflies and dragonflies.

We were told that the water level in the reservoir has fallen noticeably during the past week and this has resulted in just enough shore line to accommodate a few waders.  Today there were Little Ringed Plovers, Northern Lapwings, Oystercatchers and Common Sandpipers but if these conditions continue during the next few weeks we're sure to see a few more pass through.  A rarity of some kind would be nice but we probably wouldn’t be as excited now to see Black-winged Stilts as Peter was when two were at Belvide in 1987!

Colour-rings

Something we very soon noticed when we started birding in the Algarve was the relatively high number of birds that were colour-ringed.  Whereas in the UK we had been used to seeing a few Mute Swans and Canada Geese sporting Darvic (PVC) rings or perhaps an occasional gull or wader, in the Ria Formosa and at Castro Marim we were seeing colour-ringed birds almost every time we went out.

By colour-rings we mean multiple rings (or flags) with a unique combination of colours or single rings that are big enough so that it is possible with the aid of a telescope to read an inscription on them.  We also sometimes see nasal saddles fitted to ducks and neck collars on Red-knobbed Coots and while these are obviously not rings as such, they do serve the same purpose, which is to identify a bird as an individual.

Greater Flamingo - from Italy

Because of their size, colour-rings are most suitable for use on long-legged birds and the first ones we saw in the Algarve were on Greater Flamingos.  It’s not unusual to see up to 1,000 or even 2,000 Greater Flamingos at Castro Marim so there is plenty of scope for reading rings if we have the time and can get close enough to the birds!  We soon found that, as well as Flamingos, quite a high percentage of Spoonbills were also colour-ringed and that several species of gulls, particularly Audouin’s Gulls, were also ringed.  We have now sent reports relating to 18 different species and these have originated from more than a dozen countries.

Spoonbill - from The Netherlands

Looking for colour-rings, reading them and reporting them have all become part of our birding routine.  In 2012, we reported more than 200 ring details.  Receiving details of the life-histories of individual birds has added greatly to our knowledge of the origins, the movements and the ages/life expectancies of the birds involved and still we get surprises like the Italian-ringed Oystercatcher that we found in Tavira.  We have also been able to recognise birds that return to the Algarve year after year such as Common Redshank H19 that we have blogged about previously here.

  Common Redshank - from The Netherlands

Oystercatcher - from Italy

However, it might all have been very different!  We might easily have been put off the whole idea of reading rings.  Probably our expectations were unrealistic but when we began sending off reports of ring details we thought, rather naively as it turned out, that we might receive a reply within maybe a week or two.  Instead, the reality was that months went by with no word from anybody and we started to think we were wasting our time.  Perhaps there was no longer any interest in the rings we had reported; maybe the ringer had died!  It would have been easy to reach the conclusion that reading and reporting rings wasn’t worth the effort.  And sometimes it can be quite an effort when we have to wait long periods for birds to come closer or to move out of the deep water that is covering their rings.

Slender-billed Gull - from Spain

We now know that response times vary greatly and we try not to be too impatient.  We know, for instance, that if we report a Dutch-ringed Spoonbill or a Mediterranean Gull ringed in Belgium or France, we can be reasonably sure of a reply by return, maybe even the same day!  On the other hand, we also know that it might be six months or longer before we get a response about some other species and from some other countries.  In the past few days we have received details of six birds that we reported last December and we have others outstanding that go back further than that.

Mediterranean Gull - from The Netherlands

Last year we joined the Yahoo! Group, c-r birding, which has about 600 members who communicate with each other on various aspects of colour-ringing.  It was interesting that the very first contribution we read there was from someone complaining about the length of time he was waiting to hear about a Black-headed Gull ring he had reported.  Maybe that person's expectations were also unrealistic, but were they unreasonable?  Prompt replies would not only be courteous but would surely also encourage further reports.

How do we find out where to send details of the rings we read?  Well, in theory, details of all the colour-ringing projects in Europe can be found at www.cr-birding.org or failing that www.cr-birding.be (this website is slowly being phased out).  It is also possible to report ring details by filling out a form on the Euring website but the advice there is to look first at www.cr-birding.org.  Occasionally we do find birds that have rings which we can’t match up with one of the listed projects and so it would seem do quite a few other people as queries about such rings appear very regularly in the Yahoo! Group emails.  Why, we have to wonder, would anyone who is colour-ringing birds in Europe and presumably wanting people to report them, not make sure that details of their project are on the relevant website?  It takes some understanding!

Glossy Ibis - from Spain

All ringing is, of course, licensed and, thankfully, beyond that there is also some regulation of the growing number of colour-ringing projects in Europe with the aim of avoiding the chaos that would result from duplication of colour combinations or codes.

Some of the difficulties arising from ring reports inevitably result from rings being misread.  When looking at a small ring from a distance it is easy to confuse a 2 with a Z or a 5 with an S.  Clearly it would be best when setting up a new project to avoid such possibilities occurring.  Another problem is that the colour of some rings can fade or even change over a period of years, particularly if they are under water for much of the time.
  

Audouin's Gull - ringed in the Ria Formosa

Replies from some of the ringing projects include not just details of the individual bird that we have reported but also information about the project itself, its aims and objectives and sometimes even links to results achieved so far.  We would welcome much more of that sort of feedback.  We have to assume that birds are being ringed for a particular purpose but it is always nice to have some details.

Reporting colour-rings certainly involves a few difficulties and frustrations but it adds greatly to our enjoyment of birding in the Algarve.  Already we are looking forward to the autumn and winter and the return of all those colour-ringed birds.

The Last Few Weeks...

Can it really be five weeks since Peter returned from China?  Where does the time go?

It’s fair to say that we’ve had one or two distractions and diversions from our normal routine during the past month, some of them planned but others not so.  However, in spite of these there has been plenty of birding to enjoy.

 European Roller

Montagu's Harrier

Visits to the Castro Verde area have been fewer of late.  In contrast to the wonderful display of wildflowers that we were seeing earlier, the landscape is now looking very parched and straw-coloured as crops of hay and cereals have been harvested.  As the breeding season progresses, both species of bustards have become more difficult to see and now Montagu’s Harriers, Lesser Kestrels and Rollers are among the most conspicuous birds as they go looking for food for newly hatched young.  Also regularly seen have been Collared Pratincoles, Calandra Larks and Black-eared Wheatears and the number and variety of raptors has guaranteed regular roadside stops to check them out.

Black-eared Wheatear

In the Algarve, we’ve made only a couple of visits to Ludo and Quinta do Lago and most of our birding has been around Castro Marim.  It’s been very convenient to have several pairs of breeding Collared Pratincoles easily viewable and Little Bustards were also good while they lasted although impossible to find once they stopped displaying.  More often heard than seen have been several pairs of Water Rails.  About 20 Slender-billed Gulls and up to about 10 Caspian Terns have been regular and in the past few days the number and variety of waders has increased with Black-tailed Godwits, Red Knot, Curlew Sandpiper, Sanderling, Turnstone and Dunlin all in smart breeding plumage.  There are waders in the Ria Formosa, too, and Audouin’s Gulls are ever present.

By way of a change, we recently spent a morning just a few kilometres inland from Tavira, sitting in the car by the roadside next to a small river.  The aim was photography but we weren’t very successful!  However, from that one spot we were able to watch a surprising variety of species that included Golden Orioles (a pair with three young), Kingfisher, Bee-eater, Little Ringed Plover, Green Sandpiper, Grey Wagtail, Rock Bunting, Blue Rock Thrush, Turtle Dove, Crested Tit, Long-tailed Tit and Azure-winged Magpie.  Only a Green Sandpiper and a Grey Wagtail came close to performing for the camera on this occasion but when we have time to return to this delightful location we will be hoping to have some more of these birds coming down to the water.

 Grey Wagtail

Green Sandpiper

Earlier this week we popped across the border to Spain, to the Doñana area.  Unfortunately, the White-headed Ducks that June found on her last visit in May were nowhere to be seen but we did see five Red-knobbed Coots, a species that we don’t often find in Portugal.  It was good to see that the visitor centre at the Dehesa de Abajo is now regularly open and we met up there with ‘old friends’ Beltran Ceballos Vázquez and Sergio González who regaled us with stories of the latest sightings of Iberian Lynx.  Huge numbers of Glossy Ibises were a feature of the day with nice views of them nesting at the José Antonio Valverde visitor centre alongside many Cattle Egrets and smaller numbers of Little Egrets, Squacco Herons, Little Bitterns and Black-crowned Night Herons.  Elsewhere there seemed to be plenty of our favourite Purple Herons feeding well-grown young hidden deep in the tamarisks.

 Cattle Egret

Purple Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron

In the Tavira area, the ‘best’ bird we have heard of was one that we didn’t manage to see even though it was apparently around for several days.  It was in the mouth of the harbour and described to us by a non-birder friend as “looking like a penguin”.  Previous reports of penguin-like birds have usually involved pale-fronted immature Great Cormorants but when we eventually saw the photographs, this one proved to be a first-winter Atlantic Puffin, somewhat unexpected at this time of year.  What a pity that we didn’t get a phone call until long after the bird had gone!

China - 4

During the second week of our stay in China we spent four nights on Happy Island.  Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to find out the island’s Chinese name nor how it came to be called Happy.  It didn’t seem to be a particularly suitable name.  Much of it was a construction site and even the shape of the island has been changed by the reclamation of huge areas of mudflats that were once wader roost sites.

 Your guess is as good as mine!

On the way there we heard that a causeway had been built connecting the island to the mainland but on arrival we were puzzled to find that we had to wait for a ferry boat and make the short crossing in a rather less convenient way!  There was no explanation.

Our accommodation was, to say the least, spacious.  Externally, the building brought to mind the Bates Motel of Hitchcock’s Psycho movie but it was obviously no more than a year or two old.  It was huge; it had meetings rooms and large communal areas but only four bedrooms.

Happy Island guesthouse

Happy Island has a history of spectacular falls of passerine migrants and after the disappointment of Beidaihe we were very much looking forward to some better birding action.  We had also been led to expect good numbers of waders.

There were several birders already there who were happy to share information about the island’s best sites and what birds had been seen recently.  One of them was Ray Barnes from Birmingham with whom I soon found I shared several mutual acquaintances from Bittell Reservoir and Upton Warren back in the 1970s.  Who would have thought 40 years ago that our then friend, schoolboy birder Mark Brazil, would go on to author The Field Guide to The Birds of East Asia that we were all now using.

Our first day on the island was disappointing.  Waders were comparatively few although they did include Far Eastern Curlew, Lesser Sand Plover, Great Knot and Terek Sandpiper so not too many complaints!  Passerines of note were Daurian Starling, Japanese Grosbeak and Yellow-rumped Flycatcher but it was hard work.

 Japanese Grosbeak

Our second morning was much better.  Two Common Cuckoos were seen flying in off the sea at about 5.30am, there were several Siberian Stonechats where none had been before and surely that must be a different Yellow-rumped Flycatcher from the one seen yesterday!  During the next few hours Grey-streaked Flycatcher, Asian Brown Flycatcher, Black-browed Reed Warbler, Radde’s, Pallas’s, Dusky & Yellow-browed Warblers, White’s Thrush, Rufous-bellied Woodpecker, Japanese Waxwing, Siberian Rubythroat and Siberian Blue Robin all contributed to making this the best day of the trip so far for migrants.

 Siberian Stonechat

 Grey-streaked Flycatcher

 Asian Brown Flycatcher

The following day saw a similar pattern.  A particular highlight was seeing Siberian Rubythroat, Siberian Blue Robin and Siberian Thrush one after the other coming to drink and bathe at the same water.  Other birds during the morning were White’s Thrushes, Eye-browed Thrushes, Swinhoe’s Robin, Pale-legged Leaf Warbler, Brown Hawk Owl, Dollarbird, Taiga Flycatcher and Asian Brown Flycatcher.  All of yesterday’s Grey-streaked Flycatchers had gone overnight; there wasn’t one to be found.

 Eye-browed Thrush

I’m a firm believer in ‘birds first, food second’ so today I skipped both breakfast and lunch.  This enabled me to walk to the far end of the island where several Saunders’s Gulls were nice to see and I agonised for a while over the identification of a probable Blyth’s Pipit among a small group of ‘yellow wagtails’.  Brown Shrikes were everywhere today, several hundred of them, I would guess.  I also found a Bar-tailed Godwit with a leg flag that identified it as a bird from Australia.  The afternoon produced little in the way of new birds but a roosting Grey Nightjar was a highlight.

 Saunders's Gull

 Brown Shrike

As it was going to be my first proper meal of the day I was looking forward to dinner but it proved to be no better than the previous night, which is to say, pretty poor.  There was definitely a marked contrast between the food on Happy Island and that at the hotel in Beidaihe.  Dinners at the Jinshan had been generally very good although fried eggs and cold chips isn’t everyone’s idea of a hearty breakfast.

There don’t appear to be any maps of Happy Island.  We were told that change there is so rapid that there would be no point!  However, as long as the small woodland areas survive they will surely continue to attract migrants and I would certainly consider going back for another try.

 Boardwalk through the Temple wood, probably the best site on the island

When it came time to leave the island we packed our bags a bit more carefully remembering the earlier ferry boat trip.  But then there was the complete surprise when our regular minibus arrived to collect us and take us back to the mainland via the causeway.  Go figure!

Back in Beidaihe, there was a single Relict Gull on the beach but our last morning there produced few other ‘new’ birds.  It would actually have been awful if we had had to leave on a morning when there had been a fall.

It has to be said that this trip was only a very limited success.  The positives were more than 70 lifers that included Ibisbill and quite a few ‘Sibes’ but the scale of the migration at Beidaihe and Happy Island was poor compared with accounts I have read of previous years , the numbers of waders were disappointing and the opportunities for photography were not as good as I had hoped.  But I’m still glad I went!   

Thanks are due to Ray Tipper who organised the trip from this end; Jean Wang of the Beidaihe Jinshan International Travel Service who made all the arrangements in China and obtained all the required permissions, all of which were impossible to fault; our Chinese guide, the delightful Carol, who seemed able to fix almost anything; our driver, who hadn’t previously adopted a western name but is now known as Ayrton - he was excellent; Mark Andrews, Paul Holt, Vaughan Ashby and everyone else who shared bird information.

China - 3

Beidaihe is a popular beach holiday resort on China’s Bohai Sea coast but has also long been known as a migration hotspot visited by birders from the UK and elsewhere.  The Jinshan Hotel in Beidaihe was our base for the first part of our trip and as well as pre-breakfast birding in the grounds there and at the nearby Friendship Hotel, we visited local sites known as “the Reservoir”, “the Sandflats”, “Lotus Hill Park” and “Lighthouse Point”.  All of these provided us with interesting birding but unfortunately without ever producing the numbers and variety of migrants that have been seen in the area in previous years.

Of these local sites “the Reservoir” was probably the most productive in terms of the number of species seen.  It is actually a wetland park used for recreation by ‘China’s leaders’ and as a result not always open for visits by mere birders.  Amongst the birds seen there were Vinous-throated Parrotbills, Falcated Ducks, Amur Falcons, Eastern Spot-billed Ducks, Taiga Flycatcher, Brown Shrike, Olive-backed Pipits, Black-faced Buntings, Chinese Penduline Tits, Yellow-browed, Radde’s & Dusky Warblers and a selection of herons that included Chinese Pond Heron and Yellow Bittern.

 Yellow Bittern

We also had day trips out from Beidaihe to the Jiaoshan Great Wall and to the Qinglong River and an excursion with an overnight stay to Old Peak.  All of these were enjoyable and reasonably successful.

We were at the Jiaoshan Great Wall on a particularly windy day which wasn’t at all good for birding but we did manage to find a Plain Laughingthrush, Godlewski’s Bunting and Large-billed Crows that we initially mis-identified as Ravens.  It was interesting to see the Great Wall even though much of what we saw was a repaired or re-built section.  We were actually very lucky to be there at all as the whole site was officially closed to tourists and we had to have a special permit to enter.  This meant that we had the Great Wall to ourselves without having to contend with any other visitors.  

 Part of the Jiaoshan Great Wall

Our stop at “Stone River” on the way back from the Great Wall to Beidaihe was also badly wind-affected but Grey-tailed Tattlers, Sharp-tailed Sandpipers and Pacific Golden Plovers were especially pleasing to see for the wader enthusiasts amongst us.  A flock of Yellow-bellied Tits were also fun to see at very close range, seemingly oblivious to our presence.  Another visit there on a better day would have been nice.

 Grey-tailed Tattler

 Pacific Golden Plover

 Yellow-bellied Tit

Our day trip to the Qinglong River had two main targets: Ibisbill and Long-billed Plover.  I must say that I had no great expectations about seeing either of these birds but after some searching we managed to find both species.  First we came across a pair of Long-billed Plovers, a comparatively little-known wader of freshwater rivers.  Later, in similar habitat, when some of our group seemed ready to give up the search, we found a pair of Ibisbills with young.  The Ibisbills were probably the birds of the entire trip for me.  It’s a species that is sufficiently distinctive to merit its own family, Ibidorhynchidae.  They aren’t rare but their habitat and range do make them somewhat difficult to see; they were high on my list of reasons to sign up for this trip.

 

 Long-billed Plover

 Ibisbill

Other birds along the Qinglong River included Rosy Pipits, Eastern Yellow Wagtails of the race macronyx, White Wagtails of the race leucopsis, Amur Falcons, Meadow Buntings and White-cheeked Starlings.

 Meadow Bunting

Amur Falcon

We were also successful in finding our main target species at Old Peak where an early morning start brought us a good but rather brief look at a pair of Koklass Pheasants.  There was no chance to think about a photograph!  These are elusive birds of high altitude forests so we were very lucky to see them as well as we did!  Koklass is apparently a word that is onomatopœically derived from the bird's territorial call, although it requires some imagination!  Also at Old Peak we saw Pale Thrush, Grey-sided Thrush, Claudia’s Leaf Warbler, Hume’s Leaf Warbler, Chinese Nuthatch, Yellow-throated & Tristram’s Buntings and Daurian Redstarts.  The hotel there was a bit funky and surrounded by building work in progress but then, much of China appears to be a building site!

 Early morning on Old Peak

Chinese Nuthatch

Happy Island, our next destination for a four-night stay, was certainly a building site. More on China follows soon…