Mick and I met at Gatwick at some ungodly hour on Saturday morning, I think I had to get up at 3am in order to make it, but even so you don't arrive in Portugal until mid-morning and you can only really get an hour of birding in before lunch once you have gone through immigration and picked up the car. We had our work cut out but felt we were equal to the task of seeing as manys as possible during the portion of the day that was left.
A false start near the airport saw us driving down what eventually turned into a footpath and then a fence. This is the risk of relying purely on a satnav. This necessitated a slow and ignominious retreat in reverse until we could do an eighty-point turn to face forwards again and regain the road. There was then a second false start when the next birding location was down an undrivable track which in any event had a chain across it.... You can't beat planning things without local knowledge based simply on eBird pins! Sure, somebody has been birding there, but they know how to get in, or approach from a completely different direction. Rather than work out how on earth one accessed these places we just gave up and went to the next one, arriving to clear skies that looked like that had the distant potential to turn ominous.
Third time lucky. We arrived at the PN Ria Formosa - Ludo at around 11am and this time could actually get in. We had to dump the car and walk a fair way, annoyingly seeing a few cars drive straight past us once we were on foot, but at least we were finally birding, albeit in a brisk breeze. This was a great site, stuffed with birds, and even without a scope we were able to pick up a good selection of waders, though admittedly some had to be identified on the back of the camera. Dunlin and Little Stint were probably the most numerous, but there were plenty of Ringed Plover, Kentish Plover, a single Ruff and a single Greenshank. Marsh Harriers hunted over the pools, and a colony of White Stork and Grey Heron were present in some tall trees on the Marsh. My Portugese list really took off here, all sorts of frankly common birds that I'd somehow not bumped into elsewhere simply due to habitat. Ducks, waders, small birds like Sardinian Warbler and Zitting Cisticola. I was struck by rich the habitat was, and seemingly large parts of the coast are like this.
Large parts of the coast are also golf resorts. Not just a golf course here and there, but extensive developments with multiple courses, gigantic villas, small golf villages and interminable roundabouts. Our next stop was only just on the other side of the Salinas, but took forever to get to as we had to bypass 72 holes just to access the next stretch of marsh. Here we added Avocet, Black-winged Stilt, Whimbrel and Grey Plover in short order, as well as a Spoonbill and several Little Egret. Luckily we remained close to the car at this site as suddenly the skies darkened and a torrential downpour ensued, a pattern that was to be repeated for the rest of the day as a relentless series of squalls pushed in driven by the westerly wind.
A few thousand golf courses later, at the Canicais de Vilamoura, we spotted our first Black-winged Kite hovering over a par four, and then two Osprey over a water obstacle. A Booted Eagle soared majestically over the clubhouse. A short distance further on, at the Dom Pedro Laguna (surrounded by bunkers), a small mixed flock of Pochard and Red-crested Pochard loafed alongside hole 15 with Glossy Ibis, some Little Grebe worked the margins with a Moorhen, and a rare Mute Swan ignored everything. Serin were in the pine belt, and our first Cetti's Warblers sang from the scrub. Further on, where the golf courses inexplicably ran out, we drove a narrow track alongside some waste ground and came across our first (and it turned out, only) Black-headed Weaver, as well as yet more Booted Eagle and Osprey. Despite the development the area remains rich in birds, one can only wonder what it was once like before the arrival of the international golfer.
By now it was 3pm and we made scant progress westwards since arriving, with perhaps the best site yet to come. This is the trouble with birding! That site was the Lagoa dos Salgados, right on the shore west of Vilamoura and Albufeira. This was chock full of birds, with our first Pintail and Teal, Black-winged Stilt, and a monstrous Western Swamphen. Despite not having a scope we used the cameras to identify distant waders including a pair of Snipe, a Black-tailed Godwit, a Sanderling, two Common Sandpiper and a Ringed Plover. A Caspian Tern was a nice surprise. The sea was big and birdless, the beach vast. On the other side of this area we added Corn Bunting and a few Red-rumped Swallow, and a walk back towards the lagoon piced up a couple more as well as two Green Sandpiper. By now the day was over, it was getting dark, and the drive west to our hotel in Sagres was in a heavy downpour. Excellent dinner in a traditional restaurant, I think I had Turbot and it was fantastic with local wine.
