The floodgates open at Sagres

It all kicked off today as migrants flooded in to south west Portugal. I started at Ponta da Atalaia in Sagres where there had clearly been an overnight fall of passerines, especially whinchats and willow warblers and then excitedly went to Carbonosa to see if there might have been an improvement in raptor numbers. There had!

Total raptor numbers today across both sites (but mainly at Carbonosa) included minimums of 23 booted eagles, 10 short-toed eagles, 4 Bonelli's eagles, 14 honey buzzards, 2 goshawks, 4 sparrowhawks, 2 black kites, 3 peregrines, 2 common buzzards and 1 red-footed falcon, plus 5 black storks, while passerines included 83 whinchats, 60 willow warblers, 12 redstarts, 10 garden warblers, 15 northern wheatears, 3 whitethroats, 2 woodchat shrikes, 5 blackcaps, 5 western subalpine warblers, 1 pied flycatcher and 1 spotted flycatcher. Resident species seen included 25 azure-winged magpies, 10 Thekla larks, 4 Audouin's gulls, 15 Sardinian warblers, 2 black redstarts, 2 chough and 20 spotless starlings. A breathtaking and very tiring day!

The raptors here are almost all juveniles which are inexperienced and have become disorientated and missed the short crossing to Africa at Gibraltar. When they reach Sagres they find that they have run out of land on the very edge of Europe and are forced to reorientate. On warm sunny days from about mid-morning they start to climb high on the thermals and head back east towards the Rock. Sometimes they can be low and give excellent views, but on most other occasions they are very high. The photos above and below are short-toed eagles.

Riding the waves with Wilsons petrels

This morning I joined Mar llimitado again for a pelagic out of Sagres into the Atlantic ocean. The difference today, there was a moderate northerly blowing so instead of heading west past Cape St Vincent we went south east to calmer waters. 

A big difference in numbers today, whereas on Sunday we saw a thousand Cory's and even a couple of great shearwaters, today we were reduced to just five Cory's and a single Balearic, with no greats.

However, for some reason there were a lot more storm petrels, I counted at least 40 European and 15 Wilson's. We'd seen a couple of the latter on Sunday but I didn't get a good look at them, and since they were a new species for me in the Western Palearctic, they were my main target species today. 

Storm petrels are always a joy to see and Wilson's must go down as perhaps the most charming. Tiny little birds, only marginally larger than our own European storm petrel, they patter across the water searching for food on the surface seemingly oblivious to the huge swell and windy weather. I believe that they engage in this "walking on water" far more than European storm petrels. 

An improved raptor passage at Carbonosa

My daily routine now includes an afternoon visit to Carbonosa watch point. It's not been as good as it could have been but even so I usually see a decent number of raptors, plus a few good migrant and resident passerines so enough to make me keep going back. It's always worth a visit and today I was back again to spend the best part of four hours staring at the sky, waiting and hoping. 

Once again I wasn't disappointed as this afternoon was the best day of the week so far, with nine booted eagles, four honey buzzards, two peregrines, goshawk, hen harrier, several kestrels, four sparrowhawks and best of all, two Egyptian vultures, two black kites and a single Bonelli's eagle. Sadly I managed to miss five short-toed eagles which were seen just before I arrived. Now if we could just turn some of those numbers into double figures we'd be rocking as they say. Maybe tomorrow.

Passerines included my first Iberian grey shrike of the trip, a couple of whinchats, redstart, Thekla larks and the usual azure-winged magpies.