Birding Lisbon : The Tagus Estuary
When: October 2017 Weather: Cool to hot 15-30C
Nikon P900, Leica M 35mm summilux
Had a day free and joined a birding tour to the Tagus Estuary with Bernardo Barreto and a few other English birders….we set off about 715am in the crisp morning air and crossed the Vasco da Gama Bridge, one of the longest in the world to get across the estuary.
We headed first to the salt pans….
First bird of the morning…a little owl
Salt pans with loads of water birds
The dominant bird on this outing was the lesser black backed gull
2 ring plovers on the left and two kentish plovers on the right
Black winged stilt
Pied avocets
Black tailed godwits
Sanderlings
Flight of the Flamingos
We then moved on to the mudflats….
A pair of Crested Larks were larking about on the road….
The mud flats of the Tagus Estuary
Flamingos were everywhere
A sandwich tern posed..
And then took off….
Stone chat
Zitting Cisticola
Zitting Cisticola
and then a flash of black and white..
A shy Sardinian warbler
And creeping around a bearby treetrunk was a short toed tree-creeper
Black shouldered kite
Black shouldered kite
Northern Wheatear
Spotted Flycatcher
Wheatear
After lunch we set off to look for the Squacco heron and Iberian magpie….
Private Cork farm where we had fleeting glimpses of the Iberian magpie formerly azure winged magpie
Coot in the green pond
Squacco heron
Squacco heron
common sandpiper
Hoopoe
Common Waxbill
Poor shot of female Serin; the male was brilliantly yellow
We then headed to the northern part of the estuary …..
One of the star birds of the afternoon, the yellow crowned bishop or weaver
yellow crowned bishop
Wryneck
Wryneck
Our last stop for the afternoon was the northern estuary shore to seek the bluethroat
He was very shy and flitted amongst the bushes and the muddy bank….the Bluethroat
On the way back, Bernardo spotted these Lapwings
Green hued lapwings which are very different from the tropical red and yellow wattled lapwings
Common buzzard
common buzzard
Marsh Harrier
Distant blurry shot of common kestrel
and just before we left, we spooked a group of ground birds….
A small group of Little Bustards were our last birds of the day.
We were out from 730 am to 5pm and Bernardo from Birds and Nature Tours Portugal was industrious and hunted out each and every bird we had asked to see. It was a great day out and I would recommend this bird outing thoroughly.
The Natural Traveller 