Nature Along the Way: Birds and Wildlife on the Rota Vicentina

“In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

John Muir, “Mormon Lilies”

 

Walking Portugal’s Atlantic Coast

 

When we arrived in southern Portugal in the spring, the Rota Vicentina was not a journey we had expected to be making. Our plans for the year had originally centred on continuing north through Canada toward the Arctic Ocean, but widespread wildfires, evacuations, flooding and trail closures meant that our ongoing journey on the Trans Canada Trail would have to wait. Suddenly faced with an unexpected opening in our plans, our thoughts returned to Portugal, a country we had come to love while walking the Camino Português several years earlier.

 

This time, however, we wanted to see a different Portugal. Rather than immediately returning to the Camino, we would begin at Lagos on the southern coast and follow the Fisherman’s Trail of the Rota Vicentina west toward Cabo de São Vicente and then north through the Algarve and Alentejo to Porto Covo and São Torpes. From there our travels would eventually continue toward Lisbon, Porto and the Camino Português Coastal and Espiritual routes, but those journeys belonged to another landscape and another story. For twelve days and roughly 230 kilometres, our world was instead shaped by Atlantic cliffs, beaches, dunes, rivers, agricultural valleys, coastal scrub and the wildlife that occupied them.

 

By the time we set out to hike the Rota Vicentina, we already knew that walking slowly changed what we noticed. Birding had long been part of our travels, and years spent moving through landscapes on foot had taught us that some of the most memorable encounters were not necessarily the rarest or most spectacular. A lizard disappearing beneath a shrub, ants crossing a sandy trail, birds carrying food toward a nest or a beetle struggling across our path could hold our attention just as completely as a dramatic view. What we did not yet know was what those habits of observation would reveal along Portugal’s southwestern coast.

 

Beginning in the Ria Formosa

 

In truth, our exploration of nature in southern Portugal began before we ever reached the Rota Vicentina. After landing in Faro, we stopped at the Algarve tourism office inside the airport, where an enthusiastic birder provided maps, a regional birding guide and directions to the nearby Ludo Trail. Rather than heading directly into the city, we slipped on our backpacks and walked away from the terminal toward the Ria Formosa.  Within a short distance, the landscape changed completely. Roads, parking lots and airport buildings gave way to a broad wetland of mudflats, tidal channels, salt pans, grasses and reeds. The raised trail crossed an environment that initially appeared almost empty, but the closer we looked, the busier it became. Huge cacti, succulents and drought-resistant shrubs bordered the path. Tiny flowers bloomed in pink, purple, white and yellow, while leathery leaves and silvery foliage hinted at the adaptations required to survive the heat and dryness of the Algarve.

 

The outgoing tide had exposed the mud, and people were scattered across it collecting shellfish. Nearby, rectangular salt pans showed the long relationship between people and this wetland. Some were crusted white where salt was drying in the sun, while others still held shallow water. It was in one of these that we found a group of Greater Flamingos feeding. Although familiar from zoos and photographs, they were the first flamingos we had ever seen living freely in the wild, and seeing them feeding beneath the brilliant Portuguese sun made them suddenly seem very different from the birds we thought we knew.

 

The mudflats themselves were alive with crabs. Once we noticed the burrows, we seemed to see them everywhere. Males stood outside their holes waving one greatly enlarged claw toward females and rivals, creating the impression of an entire muddy landscape filled with tiny signalling creatures. Farther along we spotted Eurasian Spoonbills and a Grey Heron, while signs near the dunes asked visitors to report chameleon sightings as part of a regional citizen-science project. We searched carefully, but the chameleons remained hidden.

 

Perhaps the strangest element of the wetland was the aircraft above. Planes regularly passed low overhead as they approached or departed Faro Airport, yet the birds feeding beneath the flight path appeared almost indifferent to them. Later, on our way toward the train station the following morning, the Ria Formosa offered still more birds: Common Shelducks paddling in calm water, a Little Egret fishing in the shallows and a Common Sandpiper working its way along the stones at the water’s edge. Before we had walked a kilometre of the Fisherman’s Trail, Portugal had already begun introducing us to a remarkably different natural world.

 

Lagos and the Southern Cliffs

 

The Rota Vicentina itself began for us at Lagos, where the Bensafrim River meets the Atlantic. At first the route moved through a landscape shared heavily with people - marinas, beaches, neighbourhoods, boardwalks, and lighthouses.  Yet amid all of the human influence, nature was never entirely pushed aside. Golden beaches lay beneath cliffs striped with red, ochre, yellow and grey, while arches, caves and narrow coves revealed the continual work of waves on the coastline.

 

As we left the busiest parts of Lagos behind, sandy paths and wooden boardwalks took us through low coastal vegetation. We heard small animals moving through the grasses and shrubs before we could see them. A European Serin appeared in the undergrowth, a Common Hoopoe flew from the lower branches of a tree, a European Greenfinch moved along a fallen limb, and the call of a Eurasian Blackbird carried across the trail.

 

The following morning, heading toward Luz, the Rota climbed above the sea. European Stonechats called from the low shrubs, Sardinian Warblers watched from the vegetation, and we encountered our first Thekla’s Lark. Then, almost without warning, one of the largest snakes we had ever seen in the wild shot across the trail in front of us and disappeared quickly into a shrub. We were probably as startling to it as it was to us.  Around the cliffs the vegetation became increasingly fascinating - dwarf palms, thyme, rosemary and lavender grew beside the path, mixed with an array of wildflowers we could not always identify. The heat strengthened as the day progressed, but Stonechats and larks continued moving through the dry grasses. Beyond Burgau, we entered the Parque Natural do Sudoeste Alentejano e Costa Vicentina, and from there nearly the remainder of our walk would remain within a protected landscape stretching north along the coast.

 

Near Salema, the rocks offered a different kind of natural history. After dropping our packs at our accommodations at the end of the day, we returned to the beach specifically to look for fossilized dinosaur footprints mentioned in our guidebook. We searched unsuccessfully until another family, who had themselves spent considerable time finding them, showed us where to look. There, preserved in stone above the modern beach, were tracks left by animals that had crossed this landscape millions of years earlier!

 

Almost as fascinating were the cliffs themselves. Layers of red, yellow, grey and bluish rock were intersected by almost vertical bands of bright pink. We lacked the geological knowledge to properly read what we were seeing, but that hardly diminished the wonder of standing beside a living shoreline and realizing how much history was exposed in the rock.

In town itself, House Martins were building their mud nests beneath the roofs of buildings, and they seemed striped with different colours, as though the birds had gathered material from several of those differently coloured soils. As we watched, tiny heads poked from the nests while adults hurried back and forth carrying food.

 

Salema to Sagres: Small Wetlands in an Exposed Landscape

 

The stage between Salema and Sagres was among the physically hardest of our walk, repeatedly dropping from high cliffs toward beaches before climbing back onto exposed headlands. At times the trail seemed composed almost entirely of reddish earth, rock, ocean and sky. Yet the apparent openness concealed a great deal of life.  Birdsong regularly came from the shrubs even when we could not identify its source. At one point, nesting birds became increasingly agitated as we approached, repeatedly warning us until it was clear that the trail had brought us too close to their territory. Needless to say, we continued on rather than bothering them. 

 

One of the most memorable habitats appeared close to Sagres at Praia dos Rebolinhos. After kilometres of exposed terrain, we descended toward a rocky beach at the mouth of a small stream and found a pond tucked below the cliffs. Here duckweed covered the water in such a dense layer that it seemed almost solid, while cattails edged the shore. Before we reached the bottom, we could hear frogs calling loudly from the vegetation.  The site was noted locally as a productive birding area, and although many of the species we hoped to see remained elusive, we watched a pair of small reed birds moving through the cattails and carrying food toward their nestlings. Gulls passed overhead while the chorus of frogs continued beneath them. It was a tiny but fascinating concentration of freshwater life surrounded by an otherwise dry and exposed coastal landscape.

 

Here Sean spotted something on a rock beside the trail. At first he had his camera trained on what looked like a small insect, but when I raised my binoculars the shape made itself know – it was a scorpion basking in the sun. After the initial surprise wore off, we found ourselves studying the pincers, segmented body and sharply curved tail. It was our first encounter with a wild scorpion, and another reminder that our attention on a birding trail did not always remain directed toward birds.

 

Sagres and the Edge of Migration

 

Sagres is situated at the southwestern edge of mainland Portugal, and the region lies along important lines of migration between Europe and Africa.  As such, birds are woven into the identity of the town itself, and a mural celebrating the annual Festival de Observação de Aves depicted the migration for which the area is known, particularly during autumn. We were there in spring, but the importance of this area to birds was impossible to ignore.

Outside Sagres – crossing an Important Bird Area, the trail crossed a broad coastal plateau – we walked amid green shrubs and tall dry grasses which had spread across the landscape.  Amid these, white rocks carried patches of orange lichen while yellow, pink, purple and white flowers broke up the vegetation. The footpath itself formed a terracotta ribbon through it all, while red cliffs dropped toward extraordinarily blue water.

 

Here gulls wheeled along the cliff edges, using the rising air, while swallows shot in and out of caves with a speed that made them difficult to follow through binoculars. Closer to the cliffs, we were thrilled to locate Red-billed Choughs nesting among the rocks, mixed with active House Sparrows. Eurasian Collared Doves called nearby, and Stonechats continued to accompany us across the low vegetation.

 

Approaching Cabo de São Vicente, the ground changed again. Packed earth gave way to rough exposed rock, forcing us to concentrate on every step as we followed painted blazes across a broken limestone surface. The lighthouse stood ahead on its promontory while the Atlantic stretched around us. For centuries this headland has held historic, cultural and religious importance. 

 

Turning North

 

At Cabo de São Vicente the direction of the Rota Vicentina changed. The first few stages had led us largely westward from Lagos - here we turned north.  Beyond Vila do Bispo, open agricultural country replaced some of the dramatic clifftop walking. The soil was dry and cracked beneath the growing heat, and the “forest” the guidebook had detailed seemed to consist of only a scattering of trees across otherwise open ground. Yet vegetation persisted in seemingly inhospitable conditions, and birds continued moving between fields, shrubs and isolated patches of cover.

 

The trail eventually returned to the shoreline, which meant increasingly dealing with sand. Around Carrapateira and farther north, the Fisherman’s Trail often became a narrow ribbon of a pathway through dunes or a route across beaches where every step sank into loose ground. The difficulty of walking there made the ecology of the dunes more apparent because we spent so much time staring at what grew around our feet. Succulents spread across sandy slopes, while rosemary, thyme, lavender, myrtle and juniper formed low ecological communities shaped by wind and salt. Butterflies passed through flowering vegetation, and lizards repeatedly darted away from our approach.

 

Some plants seemed almost absurdly luxuriant compared with the small ornamental versions we knew from Canadian garden centres. Ice plants and other succulents covered entire sections of shoreline rather than occupying carefully tended pots. Wind, drought, salty spray and unstable soil had created them, and they thrived in that particular niche.

 

White Storks Above the Atlantic

 

Of all the wildlife along the Rota Vicentina, nothing became more closely associated with the route for us than White Storks.  We already knew these enormous birds from earlier walks in Portugal and Spain, where we had watched them nesting on bell towers, utility structures and other high points in towns and agricultural country on the Camino Francés.  Along the Costa Vicentina they did something that initially seemed improbable: they nested on rocky sea stacks.

 

The first active nest stopped us completely. Instead of looking upward toward a church tower, we were standing on a cliff almost level with the nest on a rock only a few feet offshore. Below it, waves crashed around the base of the sea stack. Above them, an adult stork stood beside small fuzzy white chicks. We watched adults launch into the air, glide away over the Atlantic or inland and eventually return to the nest. Smaller birds appeared around the mass of sticks as well, apparently taking advantage of the insects and shelter within it. Nearby, Yellow-legged Gulls and European Shags occupied other rocky ledges.

 

Then we found another stork nest. And another. And another.   North of Arrifana and again beyond Zambujeira do Mar, White Storks became a recurring presence. Some nests were substantial constructions supporting several chicks; others appeared little more than a loose collection of sticks. At times six or more were visible on rocky promontories along the coast. Watching these huge birds rise on the wind above breaking waves became as characteristic of the Fisherman’s Trail as the sand beneath en route.

 

Around the storks were smaller lives that could easily have been overlooked. Stonechats moved among the shrubs. Ants formed long streams across the trail. Large black Scarites cyclops beetles with impressive pincers crossed the sand. Lizards basked in the sun until our footsteps sent them into vegetation. Rabbit tracks, burrows and narrow animal pathways disappeared into scrub, and occasionally an actual rabbit bounded away ahead of us, a flash of white tail vanishing into cover.

The coast could look remarkably empty from a distant viewpoint. Walking through it revealed something quite different.

 

Rivers, Fields and Aljezur

 

Near Aljezur, water changed the character of the route again. Leaving the exposed coast, we moved toward the Ribeira de Aljezur and a greener landscape shaped by river channels, agriculture and wetter ground. Around the town itself, nature and settlement overlapped almost completely.  While eating beside the river, we watched ducks and geese moving through the water. Turtles appeared at the surface, snakes swam across the river, and young Barn Swallows called from a nearby bush to be fed by adults.

 

The following morning, a park at the edge of town contained information about efforts to restore the local waterway as habitat for birds, turtles, snakes and fish - the very animals we had been watching while sitting at a restaurant patio the previous afternoon.  From Aljezur the trail climbed into open agricultural land. Goldfinches bounded between shrubs feeding on thistle seeds and somewhere across the fields we heard the first cuckoo of our journey. The route passed farms and cultivated ground before gradually returning toward the Atlantic.

 

While trekking the Rota Vicentina, the distinction between natural and altered landscapes seemed increasingly difficult to maintain. Rivers had been modified, fields cultivated, towns constructed and roads pushed across the countryside, yet birds nested around buildings, reptiles occupied waterways, and insects moved through agricultural areas. The result – some of the most interesting nature was not always found beyond human influence. Frequently it existed alongside it.

 

Approaching Odeceixe made that particularly clear. After another exposed coastal section, we turned inland beside the Seixe River. Here, agricultural fields became intensely green, reflecting the floodplain beneath them, while marshy ditches filled with reeds and rushes. Amid this environment, birds called constantly from vegetation that was dense enough to keep many of them hidden. Near town, however, a mixed group finally came into view: European Goldfinches, Corn Buntings and two Eurasian Wrens among the birds recorded in our notes.

 

Into the Alentejo

 

Crossing the river at Odeceixe carried us from the Algarve into the Alentejo. The trail of the Rota returned to the Atlantic Coast, but the route became increasingly dominated by dunes, deep sand and long exposed stretches.  Near Zambujeira do Mar we encountered a Peregrine Falcon perched on a rocky outcrop. White Stork nests again sat above the ocean, while ants, lizards and the large black beetles occupied the world immediately around our feet. Farther along, rabbits appeared occasionally among the scrub, although tracks, holes and trails through vegetation suggested far more animals than we actually saw.

 

From Zambujeira toward Cabo Sardão, stork life once again became especially striking. Adults stood on nests only twenty or thirty feet from some viewpoints, caring for young while the wind blew in from the Atlantic. Nearby, the landscape itself became more intricate. Cacti forming field boundaries were preparing to bloom orange, oleanders stood head-high beside the track, and butterflies, sparrows and Stonechats moved through them. Large Psammodromus lizards basked on the dusty path. A short corridor through bamboo and eucalyptus was filled with butterflies and with unfamiliar bird calls.

As happens, not everything we saw could be named, which is always part of travelling through an unfamiliar ecosystem. Sometimes we had photographs that could later be submitted to iNaturalist for identification; sometimes we had only a movement in vegetation, a call from inside a shrub or a set of tracks disappearing through sand. Those incomplete observations are also part of the journey.

 

An Animated Cliff and the Rio Mira

 

Between Almograve and Vila Nova de Milfontes, after a morning that involved mud, dense vegetation and awkward trail conditions, we emerged back onto the Atlantic coast and found one of the most extraordinary bird colonies of the walk.  An eroding cliff face ahead of us was riddled with small holes. At first they looked like nothing more than the weathered surface of sand and rock. Then we realized the entire wall was moving. Bank Swallows were everywhere. Adults swept back and forth in front of the cliff, abruptly disappearing into nest holes before shooting back into the open air. Young birds poked their heads from entrances, calling as adults approached with food. The colony operated at astonishing speed, an entire community hidden inside a landscape we might easily have walked past had we not stopped long enough to notice the movement.

 

Soon afterward the route turned inland toward the Rio Mira. Sedges lined the sandy track and isolated trees leaned beneath years of Atlantic wind. Across the river stood Vila Nova de Milfontes, where the estuary opened toward the sea. Low tide exposed broad sandbars and temporarily halted the ferry, forcing us to continue inland toward the bridge.  The detour brought another unexpected change in habitat. After climbing through open ground, we entered the shade of a cork forest. After so many kilometres beneath direct sun, the difference was evident. The temperature dropped, the shade offered relief and for a short while the Atlantic disappeared entirely behind trees.

 

It was one more reminder of how misleading memories of a “coastal trail” can be. Looking back, we remember cliffs and ocean because they were visually dramatic, but the trail also took us through wetlands, farms, along the shores of rivers, stands of pine, eucalyptus, and cork as well as to freshwater ponds and estuaries.

 

The Final Coast

 

Our last day from Vila Nova de Milfontes toward Porto Covo and São Torpes brought many of the landscapes we had explored together. Leaving town early gave us several quiet hours before the growing stream of southbound hikers appeared. During this time, rabbits were easier to spot - their white tails flashing as they disappeared into vegetation.

 

Beyond Ponta das Barcas, the trail entered an area our guide identified as Portugal’s largest expanse of lithified dunes. The walking was still difficult - deep sand had long since become part of our understanding of the Rota - but the geology and plant communities were increasingly interesting.   Here Jackdaws, Rock Pigeons and martins moved around caves and eroded cliff overhangs. Stork nests remained offshore, lizards crossed the path, and wildflowers filled protected hollows among the dunes.

 

Closer to Porto Covo, the colour of the landscape shifted, with golden sand and strongly yellow cliff formations around some beaches. Conifers appeared in places, rosemary formed dense patches, and succulents spread over large dunes. Offshore at Ilha do Pessegueiro, birds occupied an island that also held the remains of centuries of human use.

 

Eventually Porto Covo appeared, followed by the uneventful final kilometres to São Torpes.

 

What We Remember About the Rota Vicentina

 

Looking back, what stands out about the Rota Vicentina is not a single bird, flower, beach or dramatic cliff. It is the dynamic of so much nature in one region.  We remember Greater Flamingos feeding in the salt pans of the Ria Formosa while airplanes descended overhead. We remember crabs waving oversized claws above the mud, Stonechats calling from low shrubs and a snake disappearing quickly into vegetation outside Lagos. We remember placing our feet beside dinosaur tracks in Salema, House Martins feeding young in striped mud nests and frogs calling from a duckweed-covered pond beneath the cliffs at Sagres.  We remember Red-billed Choughs near Cabo de São Vicente and the fields beyond Vila do Bispo. We remember scorpions, lizards, beetles, butterflies and ant columns. We remember the surprising abundance of flowers and aromatic plants growing in places where sand, drought, salt and wind seemed determined to prevent anything from surviving.  Most of all, perhaps, we remember the White Storks. Their huge nests on sea stacks followed us northward until the sight of a stork standing above the Atlantic no longer seemed improbable.

 

The Fisherman’s Trail was physically demanding in ways photographs and travel journals rarely show or make understandable. Deep sand took lots of energy to walk across - with every step. Beaches inevitably meant descents followed by climbs. Shade could be nonexistent for hours, and the weight of our camping, birding and photography equipment made the heat more noticeable.

 

Walking gave us time to see the differences and enjoy the natural wonders that a faster journey might have given way to. The wetlands of Faro were not the cliffs of Lagos. Sagres was not Aljezur. The agricultural floodplain of the Seixe was not the exposed coast near Cabo Sardão. The Rio Mira was not the lithified dunes approaching Porto Covo. Even the Atlantic changed continually - turquoise beneath sheltered southern coves, dark blue beyond the headlands, thundering waves below cliffs and peaceful tidal flats.

 

Our travel plans would eventually carry us farther north through Portugal and back onto familiar pilgrimage routes. Those later journeys were connected to this one, just as the unexpected change in our plans in Canada had helped bring us here in the first place. But neither connection defines the Rota Vicentina. For twelve days we followed a strip of land where Europe met the Atlantic and where wind, salt, sand, water, plants, wildlife and people continually shaped one another. We arrived expecting a beautiful coastal trek. What we found was much more intricate: a succession of habitats full of stunning views and dynamic nature.

 

See you on the Trail