This morning, I started up at Cantinho (above) as I quite liked the look of the place yesterday. I worked much of the valley from the low to middle roads, but found absolutely nothing! The plan for the morning was to concentrate effort from as many observers as possible on to Fojo in the hope of turning up a surprise or two, so I walked back along the middle road to the top of the valley. I headed in, and spent an hour walking very slowly down to the picnic site – the best bird I saw was a Woodcock! Whilst I sat at the picnic site with René discussing the lack of birds, the radio crackled to life – alas it turned out to be a series of updates from birders around Fojo and further afield – no-one had seen anything, and it appeared even the Blue-winged Warbler had gone from da Ponte!
With nothing doing in the valleys I decided to head up to the reservoir, accompanied by Daniel. I had five waders flying high over the hillside briefly but they disappeared in to the low cloud (fog) – bizarrely they looked most like Turnstones. We found very little around the reservoir area; I flushed two very Common-looking Snipe from the north side. I still don’t believe Wilson’s exist in the Azores ;-)
Walked back down to the village via the fig trees along the shortcut; again no Baltimore Oriole. Things are real quiet right now! Also my feet are pretty fucked:
Update 17:00: the Blue-winged Warbler has been re-found in da Ponte... that will please today’s new arrivals (three of them). René left this afternoon so there are now 16 birders on the island.
Had an evening seawatch off the village this evening; enjoyable views of about 100 Great Shearwaters offshore with lesser numbers of the usual Cory’s. Also a few Common Terns.
Birds:
Great Shearwater: c.100 off the village this evening
Common Snipe: 2 at the reservoir
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