TAVIRA SALT PANS – RIA GILAO VALLEY NORTH OF TAVIRA – QUINTO DO LAGO GOLF COMPLEX, FARO AIRPORT SALT PANS
WEATHER; sunny all day but a cold north-easterly wind prevailed throughout the day.
At times it was uncomfortable to stand out in the wind today, but we managed to see quite a few species including a couple of new ones.
After a 7 o’clock breakfast we went out for a birding excursion in the valley just north of Tavira, the same valley where we had seen the nightjars last night. It was very windy but a few places there were a few sheltered places, we spent about 2 hours in the valley stopping several times and visiting a small number of different habitats including the river, scrubland, open fields and small areas of cultivated crops.
THE MAJESTIC GREAT CRESTED GREBE
Our bird list wasn’t massive we heard a lot of species without actually seeing them, the windy conditions didn’t help. Birds that sat out on bare branches or telephone wires were our main sightings; such as – Woodchat Shrike, Greenfinch, Serin, Bee-eater, Hoopoe but we also saw Black-eared Wheatear, Blackcap, Common Waxbill and lots of Iberian Magpies.
At 11am we returned to the hotel to pack and to get ready to check-out at 12 noon which we promptly did. Our flights were late afternoon so we still had time to go birding at the Ria Formosa and to the Golf Course at Quinto do Lago. We spent our last two hours watching a good number of interesting species and the salt pans held a couple of thousand waders. It was great to finish the trip like that.
So it was all over, I had 135 species on the master list and the others had a few less, but we agreed that it had been a superb trip and the ‘Great Bustards’ got the bird of the trip award.