As we headed back to the Quinta da Rocha last night, the rain bucketed down. Rain, thunder and lightening continued well into the night, and returned intermittently until three o'clock this afternoon. We spent this morning in the common room, talking to Peter and reading some of the few books he has been able to collect about natural history in Portugal. One of his problems in trying to teach people about conservation is the lack of reference books, even decent field guides, about the countryside. Books in Portuguese are as thin on the ground as books in English; no wonder we had very little success in finding information before we left Britain.
When the rain eventually stops we take a short walk along the east marsh, stopping to look for the hawfinches and bluethroats that Peter says aere to be seen in the area. We have no luck with the finches but one bluethroat shows itself briefly; it flies away from us showing its orange tail patches, and lands on a bush with the characteristic tail flicking behaviour before diving for cover.
Perhaps because the marshes are nearly flooded after the rain, today we have especially good views of about half a dozen hares in the open fields beyond. These are cape hares, they replace the brown hare throughout Iberia, although until recently they were considered to be just a sub-species of it. Perhaps the most obvious difference between the two species is the large amount of white on the belly and legs and on the ears of the Cape hares. A dog chases one across the marsh but without a hope of catching it.
Often we hear foxes barking at night, this evening there is one out in the open like the hares. It is dark grey in colour.
We are curious about where the stone curlews go to feed at night, so we stay down by the marsh at dusk to see in which direction they depart. A dozen or so fly overhead towards going northeast, but in the twilight we can’t see how far they go. Meanwhile sixteen common sandpipers gather to bathe and call on the mud at low tide
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