On March 14 2014, a survey of beached birds and mammals was conducted along a 10 km long transect between Sao Jacinto and Torreira, by Pedro Moreira and me. The transect included 5 km of closed off beach belonging to the Sao Jacinto reserve, who gave us permission for this survey. The idea was to get an impression of what species and their numbers had been washing up on the beach along the northwestern coastline of Portugal during the previous months. None of this 10 km of beach gets regularly cleaned, making it a very suitable length of coastline for this study.
Another motivation for this activity had been the reports of large numbers of dead seabirds that washed up on beaches in France and Spain, after the ‘wreck’ that occurred earlier in the year in the Bay of Biscay due to continuing bad weather conditions (See http://www.sott.net/article/274701-Update-Tens-of-thousands-of-dead-seabirds-have-now-washed-up-in-Bay-of-Biscay and http://www.timvannus.blogspot.nl/2014/03/dead-british-seabirds-are-finding-their.html).
The 10 km transect we walked from Sao Jacinto to Torreira.
Results
Which of these birds died in the wreck that occurred in the beginning of the year remains difficult to determine, with the absence of earlier survey results. We suspect this had been the case with all of the puffins that were found. Even the few of those that we found on the recent tide lines showed signs these had been floating in the ocean for a while. All of the Lesser Black-backed Gulls had died recently and these were probably all local birds. Also the Common Guillemot and one or two Razorbills appeared a bit too fresh to have come all the way from the Bay of Biscay.
Beached Atlantic Puffins.
Three Lesser Black-backed Gulls and two Razorbills.
Great Northern Loon.
Unidentified Seahorse...
...and a coconut.
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