Parque Ambiental de Vilamoura — Attraction in Loulé

Nice place for a long birding trip, together with walking. Depending on the roads you use, the roundtrip will be 6 to 9 km long, along fig, pomegranate and other trees, providing both shade and hiding spots needed to spot the small birds on the farm lands.

Both birdwatching huts provide a lot of shade to cool down and stay longer (otherwise you'll miss most sights there, including the rare Purple Heron and Purple Swamp Hen).

For seeing many ducks and gulls "at once", along with the Little Egret and Great Cormorant leave the road to reach the "Laguas da ETAR".

In any case as for other longer trips: bring along enough water and possibly something to eat while waiting in the...

There are a number of walking trails around the reserve and plenty of birds to see. In November we found a few Monarch butterflies, a pale coloured Mantis and a European Leaf-toed Gecko. There are two bird hides. From one you get widespread views of reeds, reeds and more reeds. No water and very few birds. From the other hide there's water but with big clumps of grasses it's all down to whether the ducks etc decide to swim out into the open. You can, however, get good views of Marsh Harriers. Overall it's a pleasant circuit to walk. At one end there are horses ridden on the trail, while cyclists can be found in abundance. Some have bells, some don't, so...

There is nothing here, just a nice entrance gate, and a few well made information signs. The parque itself is just parched scrubland - we saw a few common birds, a dragonfly and a lizard. We also saw a couple of pomegranate trees - not seen those before, so that was interesting. The path is dusty, not always well signposted, and there are occasional piles of empty bottles/campfire.

I would not recommend coming here at the moment (Sept 2023) - but this might be a much better visit outside the hot season, or when more work has been done here.

Walk from car park to end point and back was just over 5km No other facilities here, such as benches,...