The Sagres bird festival is to go ahead later this year with an agreement already signed between Vila do Bispo council, nature organisation Almargem and Portugal’s birding association SPEA.
The presentation session of the 7th edition of the Festival de Observação de Aves & Atividades de Natureza de Sagres took place on the 14th of March at the council offices.
The agreement between the municipality, represented by its chairman Adelino Soares, Almargem represented by its president José Victoriano and SPEA represented its president Clara Ferreira, defined the amount of money allocated by the council to support the organisers and who will be doing what to ensure another successful event.
This year, the festival will run from September 30th to October 5th to take advantage of a national holiday and registration can take place from July, a month earlier than usual.
The bird chosen to promote this year’s festival is the threatened Egyptian Vulture (Neophron percnopterus), which also is SPEA’s Bird of the Year and should be in the skies above Sagres over the festival period.
Last year’s event was a resounding success with the organisers welcoming well over 1,000 participants from 20 countries who were able to spot from a total of 150 different species. There also were boat trips where in addition to seabirds, the participants spotted dolphin, bottlenose dolphin, minke whales, sharks, blue shark, sunfish, flying fish and leatherback turtles.
The event has developed in the six years that it has been running and the inclusion of transport between venues, better signage, last year’s commercial sponsorship from Intermarché, boat trips and lectures are putting Sagres on the off-season October calendar for tourists from Portugal, Spain, UK, USA, Sweden, Russia, Germany, Netherlands, France, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Poland, Belgium, Italy, Australia, South Africa, Czech Republic, Ireland and Belarus.
