Portugal (Quinta da Atalaya, Tagus Estuary, RN Sapal Castro Marim e VRSA) 10/1--25 Life Birds

GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, Quinta da Atalaya

Our hotel for our first night of the trip was conveniently across the street from the airport, so we could walk to it--in fact, it was closer to the airport than our walk from our airplane gate through customs, immigration and baggage which I measured as 4/10 of a mile. We also got our first trip bird at a little grassy area outside the hotel lobby while waiting to check in--a Black Redstart, which for Shari and me was not a life bird, having seen it in France on our honeymoon. After getting into our room, we slept through the rendezvous for a quick birding trip in a little nearby park, so we missed some birds that others in the group got--it was a sacrifice my body insisted on to my mind. 

The next morning, 10/1, at 8 AM, we met our guide, Pedro and piled into the 24-seat bus (plenty of room for everyone on the trip) and started our birding trip in earnest. The first birds we saw were as we passed over the Vasco da Gama Bridge (there's a name you remember from 6th grade) where we saw flocks of Greater Flamingos and Black-winged Stilts.

EUROPEAN STONECHAT, Quinta da Atalaya

Our first stop was a wetlands area called Quinta da Atalaya, which was very close to the Tagus River estuary. There we started racking up year & life birds for the group. The first lifer I remember was PALLID SWIFT, and first lifer I got a not-very-good picture of was a YELLOW-CROWNED BISHOP (an introduced exotic) and then, more interesting, a GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER. We also had EUROPEAN STONECHAT (a bird I thought would be hard to find and turned out to be everywhere), NORTHERN WHEATEAR (a bird I stupidly blew off when it was at Brig a few years ago), and the crowd favorite, Eurasian Hoopoe.  

From there we went to a spot on Tagus Estuary itself, where it was low tide. A lot of the birds were very far out, necessitating a scope, but we did add COMMON REDSHANK and SHORT-TOED TREECREEPER which is a dead ringer for our Brown Creeper. 

After lunch we drove down to another nature reserve where Shari was thrilled to see EURASIAN OYSTERCATCHER (lifer for me, not for her), while other birds of note were KENTISH PLOVER, SPOTTED REDSHANK, AUDOUIN'S GULL and SLENDER-BILLED GULL, the latter a species I'd never heard of--overlooked somehow in my haphazard studying for the trip. 

In all, we had 70 species before we crossed into Spain, late in the day. My list from Quinta da Atalaya:

43 species
Egyptian Goose  3
Northern Shoveler  1
Gadwall  1
Mallard  2
Greater Flamingo  6
Little Grebe  1
Eurasian Collared-Dove  2
PALLID SWIFT 1
Eurasian Coot  2
Black-winged Stilt  11
Common Sandpiper  1
GREEN SANDPIPER 1
Black-headed Gull  2
Great Cormorant  2
Western Cattle Egret  60
Gray Heron  2
Osprey  1
Black-winged Kite  1
Western Marsh Harrier  1
Eurasian Hoopoe  2
GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER  1
LESSER SPOTTED WOODPECKER 1
Eurasian Kestrel  1
EURASIAN JAY 2
IBERIAN MAGPIE 2
Carrion Crow  1
EURASIAN BLUE TIT 3
CRESTED LARK 1
Zitting Cisticola  1
Willow Warbler  1
Cetti's Warbler  1
Eurasian Blackcap  1
SARDINIAN WARBLER 1
EURASIAN NUTHATCH 1
SPOTLESS STARLING 3
Eurasian Blackbird  2
SPOTTED FLYCATCHER 1
EUROPEAN PIED FLYCATCHER  2
EUROPEAN STONECHAT 1
NORTHERN WHEATEAR 1
YELLOW-CROWNED BISHOP 2
House Sparrow  10
WHITE WAGTAIL  1