1 Jan 1989

It may be sunny and even hot during the day but it is still cold at night and this morning there is a light frost.

Sundays (and Thursdays) are shooting days in Portugal, and, as we can hear shots from the marshes, we decide to visit the nature reserve of Das Dunas do San Jacinto. The visitor centre is locked up but a sign (in four languages) points to a nature trail, so we follow that.

Maritime pine has been extensively planted along the Portuguese coast to stabilise the sand dunes, but here the woodland seems ancient and natural. The trees are not planted in rows, many are stunted and twisted, and all are covered with lichens, especially on the west­-facing side of the trunks. Maritime pinewoods do develop naturally on sandy soils and dunes in warm oceanic climates, but they are frost-sensitive and require average winter temperatures above six degrees Celsius.

The forest floor is a blanket of pine needles with mosses, lichens and small fungi, and a sparse herb layer of heather. In more open areas there are well developed shrub and herb layers com­posed of plants typical of southern atlantic heaths: european gorse and heather mainly, but also a local maritime plant called Corema album (it does not have an English name). This is a low heather-like shrub with crowded whorled linear leaves and white or red berries.

Another local plant is Myrica faya, a small evergreen tree that is native but rare in southern Portugal, and may well have been intro­duced here to help stabilise the sand ‑ it grows mainly between the pinewoods and the beach. (Apparently It is more common on the Azores and other islands, and has been introduced to Hawaii where it is now a pest species.)

The woods are generally quiet as far as birds are concerned, with little pockets of activ­ity ‑ mainly crested and coal tits, fire­crests and chiffchaffs, and greenfinches.

The path leads us to a hide overlooking a small lake with some reeds around it. White wagtails work along a sandy shore; chiffchaffs catch insects flying over the water and occasion­ally seem to pick something off the surface. The birds use the reed stems as a base, flying out to catch one item at a time and returning to any convenient stem. They seem to prefer the far side of the pond, perhaps insects are easier to see against the sun, or maybe the birds are just aware of our presence in the hide. A robin and a dragonfly each put in an appearance close by.

Eventually the trail leads out to the shore where we spend a pleasant couple of hours in the sun, studying the birds of course, mostly common scoter, herring gulls and gannets. With the tele­scope Jim picks out more skuas and ident­ifies four arctics and two juvenile pomerines. The arctics chase sandwich terns which do not seem too keen on giving up any booty they happened to be carrying.

At dusk we watch over the marshes again hoping for owls but with no luck. There are, however, an immature male hen harrier, a buzzard and a sparrowhawk. Little egrets gather in groups of about a dozen, then fly off to their roost sites, their white plumage showing up smart­ly in the dusk.