25 Jan 1989 - bird ringing

Winter is trying to catch up with us again, today is overcast and decided­ly chilly with a cold easterly wind.

We have long been waiting an opportunity to be trained as bird-ringers, but at home in Pem­brokeshire there are only two trainers and they are busy with other trainees. Peter is not qualified to train anyone, but, to our delight, he was happy to show us birds in the hand, and explain what he was doing to them. In fact, ringing as a method of teaching people about birds has proved most useful here in Portugal where few people have seen binocul­ars, and those that were interested in birds tended to look for the more spectacular ones, such as raptors. To us it is a pleasure and privilege to see the birds close up, but to many of the Portuguese students and teachers who come here, it is a rev­elation.

Peter is already doing the rounds of the mist nets by the time we have finished breakfast, business is slow and most of the customers are chiff-chaffs, blackcaps and Sardinian warblers. Some of these had been netted last winter or even the winter before.

There is a limit to how much feather detail can be seen through binocul­ars or telescope, espe­cially on a uniform coloured bird like a black­bird. Peter shows us one which looks like an adult with yellow bill, eye-ring and body feathers, yet retains juvenile tail, primaries and coverts, and some secondaries. One of the chiff‑chaffs has plumage in excellent condition, considering that its last moult would have been about four months ago: only two of its tail feathers show any signs of wear!

The western marshes

The western marshes of the Quinta da Rocha are different in character to the eastern ones: there are more salt pans, more open water and areas of rushes, as well as extensive salicornia and sueada fields. Birds are still difficult to see unless they fly, which the 3‑400 lapwing, and forty or so black tailed godwit often do al­though we could not see what disturbed them. Peter had mentioned the lack of records of jack snipe this winter, however a dog running across the marsh ahead of us flushes a couple so we can confirm their pres­ence as per normal.

Out on the mudflats two little stint looking minute compared with the dunlin they were feeding with. The two birds bump into each other, then have a bathe before something disturbs the whole group and they all fly off.

The wind blows decidedly cold across the marsh and we head home in the shelter of the peninsular. Serins make a lot of noise in the orange groves, two males in parti­­cular are trying to attract one female. They try to out‑­sing each other with wings drooping and tail flic­king to show off the bright yellow rump patch. Sometimes they face one way and sometimes the other, but she appears unimpressed.

A flock of fifty or so spotless starlings commute between a tree and the ground and back again. They act much like common starlings and the sound is similar too, but it includes a gras­shopper‑like rattle and a few rhythmic higher pitched noises. There aren’t any telephone imitations though ‑ perhaps because there are not many telephones here.

After a couple of months of wondering where first winter black‑headed gulls have gone, we now get an the answer, they come to the Algarve. Jim estimates the proportion of youngsters here at 15 ‑ 20 %, compared to the one or two per cent we have seen elsewhere.

When we walked into the village for bread and milk this morning we saw further signs of migra­tion: a dozen or so house and crag martins hawked for insects around the church, then moved off after a short while, heading north. On the way back we saw a couple of swallows