Day two of our stay on The Algarve in Portugal.
We have had a lazy day sitting watching the birds from our holiday rental accommodation looking over the salt pans of Fuseta, wandering around the streets of Fuseta and spending far too much time having lunch at our favourite restaurant in this part of the world, À do Ruí. Tomorrow we must get out a bit more!
It seemed a shame to leave Bristol in the lovely October sunshine but (and don’t feel sorry for us) we are spending the next 11 days on the Algarve in Portugal which is even more sunny and with even better temperatures,
We have come to Fuseta, a tiny fishing village in the eastern Algarve. Fuseta is relatively unspoilt and full of beautiful tiled streets to wander around with fantastic restaurants where you can eat fabulous fresh seafood and with lots of cafés to sit and people watch. One of the main attractions for us is that Fuseta is very easy to reach by taxi from Faro airport (we only took just over 5 hours from home to rental property) and it has a train station (2 in fact) from where we can easily explore other parts of The Algarve.
Better still, this area is fabulous for bird watching with loads of salt pans attracting a huge number of birds.
We have found an amazing apartment which is called “Birdwatchers’ Paradise” and looks out onto the salt pans of Fuseta. It is rather like being in an amazingly comfortable bird hide on two levels with very close up views of the birds from the terrace and the first floor balcony.
Here are some of my photos from our first half day. I’m sorry if some of them are rather too close up!
An old tidal mill (now accommodation)
We are lucky to have a period of high pressure and the lovely weather seems to be holding up. A few of my favourite photos from my walk around the local park this morning:
Following a day of (photographing) art galleries, monuments and churches in Bristol it was back to the birds this morning in Stoke Park.
Within a few minutes of arriving I was treated to a grey heron flying right in front of me and then a kingfisher posing nicely on the edge of the pond.
The kingfisher seemed to follow me around Duchess Pond and I had shots of it in lots of different locations but none as good as its original perch.
There were lots of corvids around and I even got sight of a sparrow hawk and a buzzard being mobbed by them.
Just before setting off home I saw a male and female stonechat but only managed a photo of the female.
What an amazing summer! It seems to go on and on. Statistically I have seen it has been the best ever in the UK; better than even the summer of 1976 which, as I was in my late 20s and enjoying a great summer of sport, was for me the best before this one.
What a treat too to be able to go off birding on a Monday morning following a great weekend of sport (now sadly only as a spectator) with success for England in the Women’s Rugby World Cup final, a trip to see Bristol Bears gain a good win over Leicester Tigers in the first match of a new season, Arsenal sneaking a win in the dying moments of their game and the success of the European team in the Ryder Cup golf. This morning was just as good though.
We saw so much and in such wonderful light (so no complaining from me except that I still failed to capture two common cranes flying right in front of me – ineptitude on my part). The best was clearly seeing the very secretive great bittern but it was all quite a joy and we enjoyed our trip to Slimbridge so much that we stayed much longer than usual and had a very late lunch there too.
Apologies to all who were hard at work on a Monday morning: in my defence I did 47 years of those.
Some of my photos:
Some of the other activities at WWT Slimbridge:
Encouraged by my visit earlier in the week (and the blue skies) I decided to give Stoke Park another go this morning.
Just a short distance from my home, as I pass beneath the motorway to reach the park, I am reminded by the graffiti (and the noise from the motorway) that this is still a very urban area.
However, it’s well worth putting up with the inconveniences.
On the sky line there were 3 ravens and a common buzzed.
By the time I was about to go it was getting warmer and dragonflies began to appear.
It was definitely fresher this morning on my walk to the local park.
My highlight was a jay, but I loved watching a sparrow hawk and a pair of buzzards testing each other out.
The autumn colours are beginning to show and the berries on the trees look as though there will be plenty of food for many of the birds this winter.
On Duchess Pond I briefly saw a little grebe (so cute but sadly no photograph) and as well as the mallards, coots and moorhens there was a grey heron and a tufted duck.
Around the pond there were coal tits, greenfinch, goldfinch and chiffchaff but there is still too much cover for photographs.
I just can’t resist a few more photos of the jay:
What a surprise! Just as we seemed to be moving into autumn we get a late summer’s day. The French call it l’ėtė de la St Martin and we call it an Indian summer, but I’m probably getting carried away as St Martin’s Day isn’t until the 11th November. Anyway it reached 22 degrees in sunny Gloucestershire and, although I was wearing a T-shirt, I wished I was in shorts.
Slimbridge seemed to be moving on. There were flocks of greylag geese and quite a number of Canada geese too. From our favourite hide there were loads of bar-tailed godwits which were nice to see but difficult to photograph as there didn’t seem to be a focal point. A redshank amidst the group helped a little and then when they scattered from the threat of a peregrine it was easier to pick a focal point. There were some ruff too but very far off. Common snipe are some of our favourite birds but they were quite coy too.
The highlight of the day was a male grey phalarope (not as attractive as the female) but miles away so don’t hold your breath for any great images.
We loved the textiles exhibition too:
Just time this morning for a stroll over to one of our local parks before the rain came.
There are still plenty of dragonflies around but I didn’t see much in the way of bird life except for a grey heron (and coots and moorhens) although redstarts have been reported recently.
It’s a lovely spot but not as wonderful as it looks because it’s next to the motorway and very noisy.
A very popular bird watching area local to us is Chew Valley Lake, just a few miles to the south of Bristol. The lake was created in the early 1950s (officially opened in 1956) to provide water for the city of Bristol. I remember at that time standing in the street waving my Union Flag. I hasten to add that this was in no way a demonstration of political affiliation the likes of which we are currently seeing a lot, I was simply lining the street with my Junior School to see Queen Elizabeth II as she made her way to open the lake. That’s what you did for entertainment in those days.
We last visited Chew Valley on May 16th when, even after a dry start to the summer, the lake was surprisingly full to the brim. We were quite surprised today to see how low the water had dropped over the summer in the very dry spell we have had. Today we had a few showers but I don’t think it would have made much a difference to the water levels.
Our main reason for visiting, in fact, is that a white-tailed eagle has been at the lake for the last few days. We had no luck on that score and, as a consequence of the low water levels, we didn’t see that many birds up close.
Nonetheless, we really enjoyed the scenery and enjoyed another day birding.
Today we had a walk along the Severn Estuary further south than WWT Slimbridge, which we have visited a lot recently, and closer to home. There is a section of the south west footpath between the two Severn Bridge crossings close to where the old Severn ferry used to operate at Aust and which is often a good place to view birds.
The weather is beginning to break and we managed to do this walk between showers and were very lucky not to get wet. We had views of a variety of birds but most at some distance.
We were looking for somewhere to go to avoid the crowds of Bank holiday Monday and hit on the Forest of Dean. It was certainly very peaceful and a great place to be on another very hot day.
I thought we might do well with dragonflies but the pool near the car park at RSPB Nagshead was completely dried up.
We didn’t have a lot of luck with birds either except at the Campbell hide, which had a muddy patch in front of it, we did see a few coal tits and 2 hawfinch. I have only seen hawfinch on a couple of occasions and it was a first for my wife. Good choice then.
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