Guernsey Gulls: On Holiday in Portugal

Sunday, September 11, 2011

On Holiday in Portugal

We have just returned from a week's family holiday based at Azoia, near Sesimbra, Portugal. Each morning I was able to search the gull flocks at Sesimbra Beach and Fish Port for two hours from dawn, and also to record a few gulls at Lagoa de Albufeira. The beaches from Costa da Caparica to Fonte de Telha were very busy with people enjoying the sunshine, so the gulls were loafing during the day at Lagoa. However...they were almost always very difficult to observe here at close quarters because of disturbance from dogs and swimmers. Up to 20,000 gulls were present here at times...mostly Lesser Black-backed Gulls.

During the week I took 106 cr readings - including 98 Lesser Black-backed Gulls. The most amazing thing was that although these sightings included birds from Iceland, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Britain, France and Spain - the most frequently recorded birds were "Guernsey Gulls" - with 21 observations of 16 different birds.

This is clearly a disproportionately high number of Channel Islands birds and it makes me wonder whether our gulls were so common because of the western geographical positioning of both the Channel Islands and western Portugal, and also because of early migration away from the islands? Whatever the reason I was absolutely thrilled to see so many of our own birds in Portugal!