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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emma" data-source="post: 1668526" data-attributes="member: 20257">Alvor 03.12.09We first headed to A Rocha to see the bird ringing, the weather had been damp overnight so we didn’t know if they were going to do the ringing or not! We arrived early and had a walk around the new trail that they have put up around the garden, the information boards give good background information to the area etc! It was fairly quite on the ringing front, we saw a Great Tit and then missed a Chaffinch and Greenfinch  being ringed as we were being given a very informative talk about Moths by Paula in the visitor centre, we also a flyover by a Booted Eagle!!! It was really interesting to see their collection and it would be nice to think that they could publish their own book on the moths in Portugal! Paula then kindly ID’d my Silves butterfly for me after a nice drink and super piece of lemon cake!We then headed down towards the estuary for a spot of lunch and a walk. We had super views of a Male and Female Stonechat less than 10 feet away from the car and a Black Redstart was also seen on the derelict farm building! We also had super views of a Caspian Tern fishing over the estuary, I had never seen one ‘up in the air’ before and it really showed up how big its bill was!! The wind had picked up a fair bit and was keeping most of the birds down around the estuary, we did manage to see Redshank, Oystercatcher, Sanderling, Little Tern, LBB Gulls and Greenshank on the estuary and good numbers of House Sparrows, Linnets and Crested Lark were seen in the fields alongside the estuary. On the drive out we spotted a ‘grey’ bird fly across the field and land on a fence post, our first thoughts were that it was an Azure Winged Magpie however once we had got the bins out we realised that it was a Southern Grey Shrike!! It then flew closer to us and at one point it was quite happy to share the roof of the derelict farm building with the Black Redstart……it couldn’t have got any better than this!!!</blockquote>

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