Sado River Estuary, Portugal - July 2022

We met a guide in Setubal, 29 miles south of Lisbon, on the edge of the Sado Estuary, very near where the Sado River empties into the Atlantic Ocean. The Sado Estuary is the second largest estuary in Portugal, just southeast of the Tagus Estuary which is the largest. The Sado River is the only major river in Portugal that flows north. It flows 109 miles from springs in the Ourique Hills and enters the estuary shortly after passing through Alcacer do Sal, at the southeast end. Most of the western side of the estuary is protected from the Atlantic Ocean by the 13 miles long Troia Peninsula, a narrow strip of sand less than a mile wide. From near the end of the Troia Peninsula to Setubal there is a ferry that crosses the Sado (Estuary) which is 1.5 miles wide at that point. We got in our guide's car and drove to the Sado Estuary Natural Reserve east of Setubal. We drove around some pools and found little terns nesting in the middle of a dirt road and a European goldfinch. We also found marbled crabs and a Eurasian nuthatch. During the day we drove clockwise around the estuary and had lunch in Alcacer do Sal, right next to the Sado River. Then ultimately we drove to the end of the Troia Peninsula and took the ferry across the Sado to Setubal, back to our car. We saw a black-tailed godwit; many black-winged stilts, including many that were immature; carrion crows, a common buzzard, a colony of nesting common house martins, Eurasian spoonbills in multiple locations; glossy ibis; many greater flamingos; Iberian magpies in the cork oak forests; lesser black-backed gulls; little egrets; a beautiful Mediterranean gull; a sandwich tern; lots of white storks, both nesting and feeding in the fields; yellow legged gulls; and a zitting cisticola. The bird life we saw was not as diverse or plentiful as what we saw earlier in the Tagus Estuary, a little north, but we did see a few new species and some spectacular country.

Publicado el julio 23, 2022 06:14 TARDE por rwcannon57