Vanellus Peniche & Berlengas Atlantic Pelagic
Trip Details
- Departure
- Peniche Port, Peniche, Leiria
- Schedule
- Selected dates, spring and autumn; contact operator for scheduled sailings
- Price
- Contact operator for pricing
About This Trip
Vanellus runs dedicated seabird pelagics from the fishing town of Peniche on the Portuguese central Atlantic coast, one of the most productive mainland seawatch points in the eastern North Atlantic. The trip departs Peniche port and heads out four to ten nautical miles into the open Atlantic, working the waters between Cabo Carvoeiro and the Berlengas archipelago — the only mainland pelagic seabird colony in continental Portugal. Chum is deployed at several stops during the day, allowing very close photographic approaches to feeding seabirds; a specialised bird guide is on board every departure, and the trip includes a break of around three hours on Berlenga Grande, where the endemic Berlengas subspecies of European Shag breeds alongside Peregrine Falcon and Yellow-legged Gull.
The Berlengas colony holds an estimated 800–975 breeding pairs of Cory's Shearwater and 410–784 pairs of Band-rumped Storm-Petrel — Portugal's only mainland populations of both species. Adults commute between the islands and offshore feeding grounds throughout the breeding season, and the Peniche shelf is one of the most reliable places in Europe to see Cory's Shearwater at close range. Autumn migration through Cabo Carvoeiro produces enormous passage counts (over 400,000 Northern Gannets, 65,000 Cory's Shearwaters, and 30,000 Critically Endangered Balearic Shearwaters have been logged in a single autumn), and the offshore chumming trip is the best way to see many of the passage species at hand-holdable range.
Regular species include Northern Gannet, Cory's (Calonectris borealis) and Scopoli's Shearwater, Great, Sooty, Manx, and Balearic Shearwaters, European and Band-rumped Storm-Petrels, Great, Pomarine, Arctic, and Long-tailed Skuas, Razorbill and Common Guillemot, and multiple tern species. Vanellus is a Portuguese birdwatching operator based in Castro Verde (Alentejo) and Linda-a-Velha (Lisbon area), running natural-history programmes across mainland Portugal — the Peniche pelagic is their flagship offshore product.