ALGARVE 22nd – 26th October 2006
Our holiday was based in Tavira which is a large-ish town approx 35kms East of Faro. It is notable for some great food, some historical interest and for being (currently) largely undiscovered by the British tourist industry. We were there previously in June 2006 and it was great to get back to our apartment and meet up again with the garden resident birds – Hoopoe, Common Waxbill, Sardinian Warbler and many Goldfinches and Spuggies. Unlike our previous visit there were few hirundines, but we did seem to have gained a Jay!
Monday 23rd October
We awoke to steady rain and lowering skies showing little prospect for improvement, so thought that we might drive to Monchique and Foia in the faint hope that the weather 100km or so further west and inland might be a bit better. The rain alternated between ‘steady’ and ‘torrential’ throughout the journey and as soon as we climbed a few hundred metres above sea-level, we drove straight into the clouds. Arriving at Foia, the rain eased for long enough for us to get out of the car and grope about in the murk, only finding 3 Stonechats before the rain returned and drove us back into the car.
As we descended back towards the coast, things started to brighten up a bit, and we stopped for petrol just north of the motorway and noted a White Storks nest just down the road. Some small birds flitting around it proved to be Spanish Sparrows, which cheered us up a good deal. On the way in, we had noticed quite a collection of Storks in the estuary and saltmarsh just South of J5 of the A22, so we stopped off to have a better look.
I had taken the command decision to leave my scope in the UK, and (not for the last time) started to regret not having it with me as most birds were at quite a distance. Many Storks and Egrets were easy enough to see, but smaller waders were a bit far off. I did manage to see Greenshank and Redshank a bit closer, but our attention was drawn to some derelict buildings and scrub nearby which held several Fan-tailed Warblers and Crested Larks. A ruined tower held a flock of Starlings, but they didn’t come out so I couldn’t tell what species they were.
There were signs of clearing skies, so we headed off to Quinta do Largo. For those who don’t know, this is an excellent area with much diverse habitat, including a river estuary and saltmarsh, freshwater pools and parkland, Salinas and much attractive scrubby vegetation. As we arrived, the sun started to shine so things were definitely on the up!
Walking East along the edge of the golf-course we spotted Turnstones, Grey, Ringed and Kentish Plovers, Redshank, Black-tailed and Bar-tailed Godwit, Dunlin, Oystercatcher and Curlew on the mud, with Lesser Black-backed Gulls, Black-headed Gulls, Sandwich Terns and a Cormorant overhead. Getting to the junction of paths, we decided to head up to the lake and hide (managed not to find this last time!) and immediately saw Crested Lark and Purple Gallinule just at the waters edge. The pools held quite a variety of ducks etc, including Mallard, Gadwall, Shoveler, Rochard, Red-crested Pochard, Little Grebe, Coot, Moorhen and several more Purple Gallinules.
From the hide we added Grey Heron, Little and Cattle Egret, Snipe and Common Sandpiper and watched 3 Glossy Ibis fly in to land in the reeds.
Continuing past the hide we saw Cetti’s, Fantailed, Sardinian and Willow Warblers in the scrub and started to see a few Azure-winged Magpies and these reached a peak of 30 or so birds just a few hundred metres further on. A-W Magpies had been a photo-target, so I was snapping away with my little Lumix FZ7, but knowing all the while that they were really too far away (only 30m or so, but too far for that camera…) As luck would have it, the camera battery chose that moment to die anyway, so I was put out of my misery. We only went a bit further on and then turned back, as we wanted to explore the main path up towards the Salinas.
Wouldn’t you know it, but the A-Z Magpies (which previously had been keeping a discrete distance) were now splashing about in the path-side puddles in an extremely photogenic manner and happily let us approach to maybe 7-8m before flying off. If anyone ever tries to tell you that an AWM can’t tell whether on not you’ve got a live battery in your camera – don’t believe them!!
Coming back to the junction of paths we did a lap of the salt pools which turned out to be an excellent habitat, if slightly frustrating for us. We managed to see many Stonechats, Fan-tailed and Sardinian Warblers and 2 Bluethroats, but many birds which were flitting about we were unable to id – many sightings were of the ‘2 secs in flight flitting between deep cover’ variety and I’m sure that someone with more experience of Iberian birds could possibly have come up with a few other species. In any event, there were certainly a lot more strange calls and song than we were able to come up with ids for!!
Have to say that Quinta do Largo is an excellent area and a day that had started off decidedly dodgily had turned into a fantastic days birding.
Tuesday 24th October
Having covered a good few kms yesterday, we decided to stay local to Tavira today – the weather wasn’t actually raining as we set off, but it only looked like a matter of time!
We had previously fancied exploring the Rio Sequa which heads inland from Tavira, and pictures of a local beauty-spot (Cascata Moinhos da Rocha) looked good too, so off we went.
As soon as we headed off of the N125 and started N, we hit some good habitat. As well as the river (tidal at this stage) there were some nice open rough pasture, bamboo groves and trees and scrub. From the car, we spotted White Storks, Cattle and Little Egrets and Grey Heron. Our route took us back across the river (now much smaller) and we were slightly perturbed to come across a narrow concrete bridge with no side parapets of any description. In fairness, we probably had a fair bit of clearance on either side, but it’s more than a little disconcerting to crawl across this bridge when all you can see is a foaming torrent out of either side window and have to rely entirely on your judgement when looking out of the front to actually stay on the bridge. Anyway, we made it and proceeded to drive for a few more kms through a variety of rough land and fruit groves before arriving at our waterfall destination.
This proved to be a nice enough place with quite a few of our familiar birds such as Great Tits, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Grey Wagtails and Willow Warblers. Unfortunately it was also home to an enormous number of biting insects who obviously hadn’t managed to find too many tourists to eat recently and decided to make up lost time with us! So a short look round and then back to the car.
Retracing our steps, I pulled up to investigate a flock of hirundines that we swooping around over the top of a Pomegranite orchard. From what I can see, these were pretty much all House Martins, but a bird did swoop through my field of view at very close range, which at first instincts I thought was a Red-rumped Swallow. Trying to re-find this bird again, I started to hear the peculiar buzzing calls of Common Waxbills and a flock of approx 25-30 birds started emerging from the rough grass in front of me.
These were a bit of a photo target so I tried to get some pics, but they were a bit far away for my camera with a bird that size.
By now the bugs had re-found me and were attacking with a vengeance – it must have looked pretty comical, me trying to take pics of the Waxbills with one hand, re-find the RR Swallow with the other, and all the time doing a kind of St Vitus dance/funky chicken thing to try to prevent being turned into a living skeleton by these pesky bugs! At any rate, Mrs R was laughing!
Coming back to the scary bridge, I discovered that maybe I hadn’t been so much of a wimp after all, as one of the locals had managed to fall off and his truck was now face-down in the river! The police were on-scene and quite a few onlookers who all looked quite relaxed and jovial, so I guess the driver got out OK.
Back to Tavira now to explore the 4-aguas area of estuary and salinas, which lead up to the ferry across to the Ilha de Tavira. This turned out to be a great place – a very quiet road leading to a dead-end, so little traffic and stopping not a problem – and right on our doorstep.
An excellent count of waders – BW Stilt, Oystercatcher, Little Stint, Dunlin, Redshank, Greenshank, Grey, Kentish, Little Plovers, Avocet, Common Sand, Sanderling, Spoonbill, Little Egret, Turnstone were seen from the road, with quite a few Crested Lark in the rough ground to the side. Pulled up at the end of the road and was watching the (Sandwich) Terns when I noticed a large Tern off at some distance. As this came closer, I was able to id it as a Caspian Tern – a very handsome bird and a lifer for me!!
Back in the car now for a spot of lunch at Santa Luzia.
Anyone who has ever been to the US will be familiar with signs like ‘ Welcome to Deadman’s Gulch – pop 146 – home of the Jerusalem Artichoke’ and the like…. Well, if the Americans were running Santa Luzia, it would say ‘ Welcome to Santa Luzia – pop 500 – home of the octopus!’ Sta Luzia is a quiet little hamlet with about half a dozen very modest restaurants and snack bars specialising in seafood. The one that we chose had about 40 items on the menu, with about 30 of them involving octopus, which was cooked and presented in every way that you could possibly imagine (and quite a few that you couldn’t!) A quick look round at the locals seemed to suggest that the dish of choice was a kind of pink, watery risotto-type thing, with bits of (you’ve guessed it!) octopus floating about in it. I’m sure that this probably tasted delicious, but it didn’t look great, so we instead plumped for a more touristy octopus salad which was very good indeed.
After lunch, plan A had been to go out onto the Ilha de Tavira but it was now raining so hard that we decided to drive the 25kms W along the coast road to Castro Marim instead and do some birding from the car. In the event, this turned out to be a bit of a waste of time, as it was pouring down and blowing a gale when we got there, to the extent that we could actually wind down the car windows. This didn’t matter too much, as there wasn;t that many birds to see anyway! We saw a few BW Stilts, a single Redshank and Greenshank, 3 Wheatear and a few Crested Larks. Quite put me in mind of a rotten day’s birding in the UK!!
I had a quick trot up to the visitor centre to peer through their viewing windows and added a Cattle Egret, Stork and another Caspian Tern!!
Wednesday 25th October
Awoken at 03:30 by the rain blasting against the bedroom window and peered out to see our swimming pool looking like a scene out of Moby Dick…. Great!
By 05:00 we still couldn’t sleep, so decided to give up and make a nice cup of tea. Literally 10 secs after turning on the hot plate, all power in the area went off. Couldn’t see a hand in front of my face which made trying to find the cooker, turn it off, and find my way back to bed an interesting experience! Anyway, managed that OK and laid in bed for another half hour or so listening to the wind howling and the thunder crashing all around.
Eventually the power came back, so we got up and headed out at about 06:00 – I had been determined to get to the Castro Verde area this time, and wasn’t about to let a little thing like the impending end of the world stop me….
Quite a drive from Tavira and we arrived at C Verde at about 08:15 – it had more-or-less stopped raining by now but the weather was so grim it was still only a murky half-light. Stopped the car to peruse the wonderfully detailed birding instructions that I had garnered from various helpful BF members only to discover that, in our befuddled state this morning, we’d left them back in the apartment – disaster! Never mind, I thought…. I had invested in a very nice book called ‘A birdwatchers Guide to Portugal and Madeira’ which I knew covered the area very thoroughly, and noted that the telegraph poles between C Verde and Mertola were all numbered, and the book points you to good areas and side-tracks by referring to these pole numbers. Only slight snag was that, since the time of writing, all of the posts had been replaced and the new ones don’t have any numbers…..
As we started to make our way along the Mertola road, we soon started to find some excellent habitat and noted Southern Grey Shrike, Stonechats, Cattle Egrets, RL Partridge, Lapwing, Crested Lark, Raven, AW Magpie, Hoopoe, Spotless Starling, Spuggies, Wheatear and more Corn Buntings than you could shake a stick at.
We also spotted out first raptors of the holiday with a Common Buzzard and Kestrel as well as another large raptor which I couldn’t id (not good at exotic foreign BOPs)
As we progressed, it became apparent that the weather of the last few days had taken its toll, with any unmade tracks rendered impassable and large amounts of debris (including large boughs and a few whole trees) blown down from the roadside Eucalyptus. Luckily, a couple of crews were out with their chainsaws so we didn’t get stuck, but it did mean that sometimes it was necessary to keep more that one eye on the road as we slowly picked our way along the N123!
With conditions as they were, we decided to just stick to the main road and head back home via Mertola and Castro Marim – it turned out to be a good trip round to just get our bearings, but made pretty useless by lack of info and the appalling conditions. We’ll go again, but this time (hopefully) under better circumstances.
One thing of note…. Shortly after leaving Mertola heading south, the road crosses over the Guardiana where the river is at the bottom of a steep gorge which was full of large numbers of (pale-ish) brown Martins. They didn’t look like Sand Martins, but I have no idea what they were – anyone know the area, or have any thoughts as to what you likely to find in a Portuguese ravine at the end of October??
Thursday 26th October
We were heading home this afternoon, so decided to head over to Quinta do Largo for a last look round and to be handy for the airport.
Arrived in the sunshine (!!) so set out to walk up past the hide and see if we could find a round trip via the paltpans. Much the same birds as previously seen…. The AW Magpies knew that I was loaded and ready to go this time so obviously kept their distance, and couldn’t see any Ibis today, but otherwise much as before.
As you emerge from the trees, a different set of birds start to be seen, with large numbers of Flamingoes with juveniles, Avocet, BW Stilts and Shovelers and a distant Marsh Harrier. One bird that I hadn’t expected to see was Wigeon, but there were quite a few of those too. In June I had seen a couple of Purple Herons in the area, but couldn’t see any this time, but did see 20 Spoonbills. We found that by walking up to the house near the salt-stacks and then turning right will bring you round to the top of the main track, so we completed our round trip which was excellent, but I suspect a bit of a trek if the weather was on the warm side!
Nice walk down the main track, spotting waders in the estuary on our left, looking out for Herons etc in the pools to our right, and trying not to trip over the Sardinian Warblers in front of us…. These proved quite tricky to photograph too and I’m thinking that a Spring-time trip might yield better results if they are sitting up and singing.
Managed to spot a Bluethroat in the same area as previously and spotted yet another Caspian Tern fishing out on the river. We were heading back to the car when the Heavens opened and treated us to one final drenching.
All in all, a great few days’ birding which appalling weather and a few self-inflicted wounds failed to spoil – we’re already making plans for our next trip. As mentioned, I cunningly left the digi-scoping gear at home but did take a few snaps with my pocket Lumix, which I will put up on my gallery if anyone is interested.
All the best….. Ruby
Good report Ruby, interesting to see the difference in the numbers and species mix from July when we were at Quinta da Lago.
We were falling over AW Magpies, our highest count was over 150 birds near the roman ruins. However we had a poor time with warblers in the area, they were very quiet and hard to find.
The most numerous tern that we saw were little terns, seen everyday, with up to 8 birds around the footbridge to the beach.
The ducks on the lake were pretty boring really, with mainly mallards although we did have a female red crested pochard on one occasion.