October 28th, 2009
Bird land
This is the last European frontier… I mean geographical… but is also an open window for new worlds and people who loves wide horizons and… birds! A walking trip allows you to interact with a preserved landscape. Have a look to these tips and come to visit Alentejo.
Steppelands
These are extensively farmed, mixed rotational systems of grassland, cereals, fodder crops and grazed fallow land in dry areas with low forest cover. The majority of step lands in Portugal are concentrated in Alentejo region, where a unique and diversified bird community occurs. These are specialist species that depend on this habitat for their survival, like Great and Little Bustards and Lesser Kestrel, examples of globally threatned species.”
Montados
The portuguese Montados are wooded pastoral habitats dominated by cork and holm oaks, with a controlled growth of scrub and a maintained pasture by extensive rotational cultivation and/or grazing. They support, regularly, more than 160 bird species, and more than 100 species breed in the Montados.
The rocky Southwest coast of Portugal (including the extreme Southwest point of Europe at Cape São Vicente), and the forests from Monchique and Caldeirão mountains, concentrates significant numbers of birds during migration, mostly passerines and raptors, like Griffon Vulture, Booted Eagle, Sparrow hawk and Honey Buzzard. It is also an important breeding area for Short-toed Eagle and Peregrine Falcon. Resident species like Bonnelli’s Eagle, Thekla Lark, Woodlark, Blue Rock Thrush and Dartford Warbler are also frequent in these areas.
Up north the Tejo and Sado estuaries are the most important wetlands of the central west of the country for wintering water birds, as Flamingo, Avocet, Dunlin and Black-tailed Godwit. These areas also hold important numbers and a great variety of breeding water birds, including Black-winged Stilt, Collared Pranticole, Kentish Plover, Little Tern, Little Bittern, Purple Heron and Red-crested Pochard.
You can learn more at: http://birdwatching.spea.pt/en/