A tale of two Blackcaps......

 For the last 15 or so years we have visited southern Portugal to develop a ringing camp at a well known tourist area. Vilamoura is a resort in the Algarve noted for its superb marina, and its many top class golf courses--it's well known to British tourists. However, what many of them probably don't know is that there is a very good birding area very close to the resort called the Parque Ambientale.

Having built up a good relationship with the Parque manager and the Portuguese ringing scheme we have been generating a lot of useful data on the birds which use the area.These data are increasingly useful as pressures to develop the area are always present. The reedbeds, lakes and marshes provide three main things for birds--many birds use the area to breed, lots visit to feed up en route to Africa on migration, and lots of northern European birds spend the winter at the site. We have been collecting data on the migrants and winter visitors.

Within all of our findings there are some intriguing tales to tell--and having just had some feedback from Portugal this week, I thought it timely to tell this simple but important tale of two Blackcaps:-

A few years ago we caught a male Blackcap in Vilamoura in late September. It was carrying a British ring--and when we checked we found that it had been ringed a few weeks earlier on its breeding grounds near Blithfield Reservoir in Staffordshire--Dave, who was checking the ring in Vilamoura had ringed that very same bird!! The chances of that are minute but it created a buzz and even got coverage in the national press.

Last week we heard of another Blackcap--but this time we had ringed it on a recent trip in Vilamoura--and this bird had been recaught last year by some ringers we know in Leicestershire!!

So this is building up a picture of the value of the site in Portugal as a wintering ground for Blackcaps--it certainly is used by Blackcaps breeding in the Midlands--and probably elsewhere. 

Over the years we have caught a range of warblers which have been ringed in France, Belgium, Holland and Sweden--all of which is helping us to show the authorities in Portugal just how valuable the area is. Time will tell if the reports we produce will have any impact on developments.....

Covid regulations permitting we hope to continue our data collection in late September this year--I will of course report on that if we get there.