Portugal Birding: March 2025

 Portugal?  Who goes to Portugal?

Turns out to be a lot of people.  Though not all of them are looking for birds.

We booked an eight day bird tour for March, but arrived three days earlier so we would have time to do a bit of touristy stuff.  Not surprisingly, we managed to see a few birds in that time as well.

New bird: female Black Redstart.  Day -3

New Bird: Day -1  Crested Myna

New Bird: Day 1 The first of many White Storks

New Bird: Day 2  Common Redshank

New Bird: Day 3  Red Kite

New Bird: Day 4  Dartford Warbler

New Bird: Day 5  Little Owl

New Bird: Day 6  Common Shelduck

New Bird: Day 7  Little Grebe

New Bird: Day 8  Eurasian Spoonbill

All together we saw 148 birds, 99 of which were new life birds.

I don't have photos of them all, of course, and some of the photos I have are really poor.  

Two bonus photos: 

The Black-winged Stilt is as cute as could be.

And Greater Flamingos showing less pink than I was expecting.

 Our tour was through Birds and Nature Tours Portugal with guide Pedro.  He was great, the birds were great, the food was great.  The only thing I found disappointing was that we were too early for the spring migrants from Africa.

Merlin

 Merlin is the new great thing for birders.  Well, not 2025 new, but still new.  It is an app that records the birds I am hearing and then guesses what they are.  It is wonderful, as long as you don't trust it.  Merlin has recorded hundreds of thousands of bird songs and makes suggestions.  My job is to decide how accurate the guesses are.  Right now I can go into my yard and hear tiny peeps everywhere.  Merlin records them.  Sometimes it takes the easy route and calls them Yellow-rumped Warblers.  Often they are.  Other times it stretches itself and says it can hear the Yellow-rumped Warblers, Chipping Sparrows, White-throated Sparrows and White-crowned Sparrows and then it may even throw in an Orange-crowned Warbler, a Song Sparrow and perhaps even a Dark-eyed Junco.  All the while I am hearing these same tiny peeps everywhere.  Merlin and I have to work together.  My favourite moment is when I think I recognize a sound, like a distant Red-breasted Nuthatch and look down at my phone and Merlin is saying Red-breasted Nuthatch.  For someone with a really bad memory for bird songs, that is an exciting moment.  And I trust Merlin. 

Until I look further.  Just above the Red-breasted Nuthatch it says Marsh Wren.  There is about a 1% chance there was actually a Marsh Wren in my garden.  Northern House Wren, extremely possible.  I expect they sound similar. 

After a while Merlin took a giant step forward and said it will identify birds from photos.  Yesterday I took photos of photos (on my computer) and asked Merlin's suggestion.  The first one was a vireo, I knew that much, but which vireo?  A  Warbling Vireo?  I recognize their song but birds are less likely to sing in the fall and this one wasn't.  Or maybe it was a Philadelphia Vireo.  Less likely but still possible.  The first photo I loaded brought up the Warbling Vireo as first suggestion and Philadelphia as second.  

 So I tried a different photo of the same bird.  This time it suggested Philadelphia first, Warbling second.  I was right back where I started.

 

Then I went for a bird I couldn't ID at all.

 

Merlin suggested Blackpoll Warbler.  I was shocked.  This is the Blackpoll warbler I saw in May 2016.

But then I looked further and discovered that first year birds look completely different.  Like this photo I stole from ebird.

 

Now that is when Merlin is really helpful. 

Lifer!

 On our way to Saskatoon a few days ago, I checked the Ebird list for the city to see what people had been seeing and saw the mention of a bird I'd long wished for.  Ever since a friend who doesn't like birds, (have you ever heard of such a thing?) sent me a photo of a Long-eared Owl taken on their property, it has been on my target list.  

We showed up at the site about 4:30 pm, not the ideal time to see an owl but the sightings I'd read about were all in the daytime.  No one had said where in the park the owls had been seen (did I mention there were 4 juveniles as well as a parent or two?) so we walked through the part of the park we guessed they might be in and peered into the trees without luck.  Then we met a dog walker who said the three times (!) he'd seen any of the owls they'd been in different parts of the park and high in the trees.  We wandered around some more, peering high into the trees, then took a short path off the main trail and Ray saw a young owl.

Minutes later the granddaughter with us found an adult much lower in a tree than I had been looking.

I tried to get into a position where I could get the twig out of the face, but the owl was not in favour.  Maybe next time.