Nature Along the Way: Birds and Landscapes on the Camino Portugués

“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, What if I had never seen this before?”

Rachel Carson

 

Learning to Notice What Is Already There

 

By the spring of 2019, we had begun to understand that one of the gifts of long-distance walking was not simply the opportunity to travel through beautiful landscapes, but the chance to become more attentive to whatever was around us. Three years earlier, when we first stepped onto the Camino Francés, birds, flowers, lizards, weather, and changing habitats had often appeared almost unexpectedly within a pilgrimage we still thought of primarily in historical, cultural and personal terms. Walking the Via Podiensis across France the following spring deepened that awareness. The seasons, agricultural countryside, forests and wildlife became increasingly inseparable from our memories of the route itself.

 

When we returned to the Camino in 2019 to walk north from Lisbon on the Camino Portugués Central, something had shifted again. We were still pilgrims following yellow arrows toward Santiago de Compostela. We still entered churches, explored historical communities, shared meals with other walkers and measured our days in kilometres. Yet we were also becoming increasingly willing to stop simply because something beside the trail had caught our attention. A wetland, an unfamiliar bird, a stork nest balanced high above us, or a river disappearing into the morning mist could hold us in place far longer than our guidebook itinerary suggested it should.

 

Perhaps more importantly, Portugal began challenging some of our assumptions about where meaningful encounters with nature occurred. The Camino Portugués was certainly not an uninterrupted journey through wilderness. Much of it passed along paved roads, cobblestone lanes, suburbs, farms and industrial corridors. There were highways and railway tracks, treatment ponds and power lines, clear-cuts and eucalyptus plantations. Yet birds nested on the power towers and smokestacks above us, flowers emerged around abandoned walls, frogs called from ponds beside villages, and wetlands persisted beside some of the most altered landscapes we encountered.

 

Slowly, the route began teaching us something that would continue to shape the way we travelled afterwards: nature did not begin only when the pavement ended. Sometimes we simply had to slow down enough to notice what was living alongside us.

 

Walking Out of Lisbon

 

Our encounters with nature began before we had even officially left Lisbon. Wandering through the city, we heard unfamiliar birds among the gardens and trees and watched peacocks displaying inside Castelo de São Jorge. It was a reminder that even within one of Europe's great historic capitals, the distinction between cultural exploration and nature observation was not as clear as we sometimes imagined it to be.

When we finally set out from Sé Cathedral, a dense morning fog hung over Lisbon. Instead of diminishing the experience, the mist made the streets magical-looking and kept the growing heat at bay as we followed the Camino through Alfama and toward the waterfront. Eventually the route brought us into Parque das Nações, where gardens, tree-lined paths and waterfront walkways stretched beneath the immense Vasco da Gama Bridge. Joggers, couples and families shared the public space around us while landscaped gardens and the nearby Tagus created a very different departure from the city than the bleak industrial outskirts we had expected from reading other accounts.

 

Beyond the developed waterfront, the landscape opened into an unexpected mixture of river, wetland and agriculture. Hydro towers climbed surrounding hills while vineyards and orchards occupied others. Spring flowers brightened the exposed countryside, and somewhere along that stretch our carefully drafted schedule began to lose some of its importance. We found ourselves birding our way slowly through the valley and spending considerably longer there than we had intended.

There was a time when we might have worried that we were falling behind. We had kilometres to cover and a destination for the evening. Yet standing beside those wetlands, trying to identify unfamiliar birds and watching the life moving through the reeds, the obvious response finally occurred to us: the Camino was not a race. If this was what had captured our attention, why were we in such a hurry to leave?  That simple realization seems unremarkable now, but at the time it represented an important change. We were beginning to understand that stopping was not necessarily an interruption of the walk. Sometimes stopping and taking a few minutes was the point of walking in the first place.

 

North of Lisbon, riverside trails and boardwalks carried us through areas full of tall reeds and wetlands where other birders were also watching the water. We recorded gallinules, mallards, finches, egrets and shorebirds while moving between green spaces, roads, railways and developed areas. The transitions could be abrupt. A pleasant riverside pathway might suddenly reach a roadway or industrial complex before returning again to fields and wet ground.  Interestingly, however, rather than detracting from the nature we were encountering, those contrasts increasingly became part of what interested us.

 

Birds Between the Factories

 

One of the most revealing examples came as we continued north through the broad Tagus landscape. Between Vila Nova da Rainha and Azambuja, the Camino passed industrial infrastructure before taking us beside water-treatment ponds that had developed many of the characteristics of wetlands. It was hardly the landscape most people would imagine when planning a nature holiday in Portugal. 

 

Yet the birds seemed unconcerned with our expectations.  Around the ponds we watched ibis, shorebirds, gulls, finches and warblers, comparing unfamiliar species with birds we knew from Canada and staying once again far longer than the demands of the day's stage might have warranted. Flowers covered many of the nearby fields, while storks occupied nests built on power structures, tall trees and brick chimneys. We watched adults passing overhead carrying material back to their nests and later spotted young birds appearing above the rims.

 

Not long ago, while walking the Camino Francés, we had encountered the great nests of European White Storks after many of their occupants had already departed. Here in spring the structures were active and alive. Their enormous nests seemed to belong equally to the birds and to the human landscape on which they depended: towers, rooftops, chimneys and utility structures had become nesting sites within a countryside transformed by generations of people.  These were not pristine landscapes, and it would have been misleading to pretend otherwise. Busy roads remained dangerous for wildlife and uncomfortable for walkers. Industrial facilities were visible. Infrastructure fragmented habitat. Yet the presence of human alteration did not mean the absence of nature. Birds were making use of the water, vegetation, fields and structures that remained available to them.

 

That realization stayed with us – as too often we imagine the natural world as existing somewhere beyond the places where people live and work, as though reaching it requires travelling to a park, forest or wilderness reserve. The Camino Portugués continually complicated that idea. Habitat survived in narrow corridors beside roads, around ponds, between agricultural fields and amid infrastructure. The landscape was not untouched, but neither was it lifeless.

 

Fields, Rivers and the Return of Spring

 

As the route carried us farther from Lisbon, agriculture became increasingly prominent. Rivers, orchards, vineyards, livestock and cultivated fields defined much of the countryside through which we walked. The agricultural landscape often looked simple from a distance, but travelling through it slowly revealed layers of work, effort, nature and wildlife that we had previously not given much attention to. 

 

Swallows called outside our accommodations in the mornings. Around Golegã, horses moved through a region famous for breeding them, while storks occupied towers above the surrounding fields. Goats appeared beside streams and small farms. Birds moved between hedges, stone walls and patches of woodland. Spring flowers coloured field margins and abandoned places that might otherwise have appeared unremarkable.  The weather too continually changed what those places looked and felt like. Fog reduced buildings and trees to silhouettes. Rain deepened the colours of vegetation and sometimes (frustratingly) turned paths into running water. On exposed stretches, cloud cover was a gift, protecting us from a sun that became surprisingly intense even in spring. On other days, shade itself became something we anticipated with almost unreasonable enthusiasm.

 

Near Santarém, ruins and abandoned structures stood. Along their edges, poppies and other flowers gathered around broken walls, while birds and lizards occupied spaces people had relinquished. The language of nature "reclaiming" human places is perhaps too simple - many of these landscapes had been shaped and reshaped repeatedly for centuries - but walking among those ruins provided a vivid reminder of how quickly life returns when opportunities offer the chance.  Once these types of details were noticed, the small observations that they gave way to began to accumulate. So too did our understanding of the nature of this region develop. 

 

We listened to swallows from bed before beginning one morning's walk. Elsewhere we heard an owl before sunrise and watched bats moving above a river collecting insects. Baby goats played on a hillside. Storks peered from nests high on power towers. Lizards vanished among walls and vegetation before we could photograph them. None was necessarily the dramatic wildlife encounter a traveller might cross an ocean or walk the length of a nation hoping to see. Together, however, they formed much of what we now remember about moving through central Portugal.

 

Forests That Complicated the Idea of Nature

 

Nature has never simply been scenery beside the Camino. Pilgrims move physically through it, and are affected every day by temperature, vegetation, water, elevation and the surfaces beneath their feet.

 

As we travelled north, woodland became a more regular part of our days. After long stretches of pavement and open countryside, entering a shaded forest often felt like welcome relief from the rising temperatures of the days. Eucalyptus in particular became one of the sensory memories of this Camino. We remember its scent, the change in temperature beneath the trees and the welcome protection from the sun during long stages.  But the forests also forced us to look more carefully. The word forest could describe remarkably different places. Some stretches felt cool, shaded and alive. Others were obviously plantations. We passed forestry tracks, recent cuts, and burned areas. On one stage beyond Tomar, we moved through fragrant eucalyptus woodland, olive plantations and areas of cork before returning repeatedly to roads and forestry tracks. Elsewhere, an inviting patch of woodland abruptly gave way to a landscape heavily altered by logging.

It would have been easy to describe every stand of trees as beautiful simply because it provided shade to two tired walkers. Yet walking through these places and spending so much time in them made the differences difficult to ignore. A plantation could be pleasant to walk through without possessing the complexity of a more diverse woodland. An area could simultaneously provide habitat and reveal ecological disturbance. Similarly, forestry cuts removed shade, gave way to mud and changed our pace – just as it affected the birds that were there.  Appreciation did not require pretending that every green landscape was ecologically equivalent.

 

To this end, it must also be acknowledged that not every encounter was pleasant either. We found snakes dead along roads and later a hedgehog. On one particularly difficult stretch near Águeda, the Camino carried us through roadways and industrial areas where an isolated horse stood among abandoned development. These were uncomfortable observations, but they were part of the journey as much as spring flowers and singing birds. Walking exposes beauty, but it also removes some of the insulation that faster forms of travel provide from damaged landscapes.

 

Rivers, Farms and Northern Portugal

 

North of Porto, the landscape gradually changed again. The route still included roads and cobblestones, but there were longer sections through rolling agricultural country, forests and lanes bordered by old stone walls. Goats and sheep appeared in the fields, vineyards covered slopes and woodland offered increasingly precious shade as the days grew warmer.

 

Approaching Ponte de Lima, we followed paths through a beautiful rural valley before arriving beside the river and the city's famous bridges. Here, one of the most memorable features for us was not confined to the historic centre. River walkways connected with green corridors and protected bird areas, allowing us to spend part of the afternoon birding along the water after the stage was finished.  Here young people swam nearby. Residents walked along the river. Birds occupied the water and vegetation. Historical bridges crossed the same landscape.  It was precisely the kind of place the Camino Portugués had been teaching us to appreciate: not nature isolated from human life, but habitat woven through the centre of it and shaping the experiences of those who both lived and visited here.

 

The hills became more pronounced as we continued toward the Spanish border. Farms and vineyards remained threaded among woodlands and rural communities.  Crossing the Minho River from Valença into Tui carried us across a political boundary, but there was no equivalent ecological line drawn through the landscape. Rivers continued through their valleys. Pine and eucalyptus remained on the hillsides. Birds crossed the border without acknowledging that we had entered another country.

 

What did change was the Camino itself.  As we moved farther into Galicia and closer to Santiago, the number of pilgrims increased substantially. Trails that had sometimes seemed almost empty in Portugal became social spaces filled with walkers converging on the same destination. That energy has always been part of the Camino, and there was pleasure in feeling the pilgrimage gathering around us. Yet the crowds also changed our hike and the nature of our observation.  Simply because it became harder to stop.  Perhaps that was why some of the more peaceful moments remained so vivid to us in this stretch. Morning mist settling between trees in the morning. Light falling dramatically across an agricultural field. A woodland briefly muffling the conversations around us. After weeks of paying closer attention to rivers, birds, farms and fragments of habitat, we were more conscious of how easily that attention could disappear when the pressure to keep moving returned.  Amid it all, we struggled to remain open to stopping, watching and noticing the natural world around us.

 

A Different Way of Seeing

 

Looking back, the Camino Portugués from Lisbon to Porto to Santiago de Compostela occupies an unusual place in the evolution of our relationship with nature and long-distance walking. It did not give us the dramatic mountain landscapes we would later encounter on other routes, nor did it offer continuous stretches of wilderness. Quite often it gave us precisely the opposite: suburbs, agricultural districts, roads, industrial infrastructure and landscapes that had been altered repeatedly by generations of human activity.

 

Perhaps that is why its lesson has stayed with us.

 

The Camino taught us that looking for nature only in places we have already decided are "natural" means overlooking much of the living world. Storks nested on power structures and chimneys. Birds gathered around treatment ponds. Wetlands that persist and thrive beside transportation corridors. Flowers emerging from overlooked ruins. Swallows shared towns with people. Frogs called from small ponds. Rivers provided space simultaneously for wildlife, recreation and community life. None of this meant that disturbance, litter or pollution ceased to matter. Roads killed wildlife. Forestry altered hillsides. Habitat was fragmented, and industrial landscapes remained industrial landscapes. Recognizing the resilience of wildlife should never become an excuse for accepting its continued loss. But neither should damaged or ordinary places be dismissed as though there is nothing left within them worth noticing or protecting.

That may have been the deeper change taking place in us during the spring of 2019. On our earlier Caminos, we had increasingly noticed the natural world surrounding the pilgrimage. On the Camino Portugués, we were beginning to understand that paying attention itself could become part of the pilgrimage. We no longer needed the landscape to be spectacular before giving it our attention.  A riverbank was enough. A bird disappearing into reeds was enough. So was a stork carrying sticks across an industrial skyline, a lizard slipping into an old wall, or the sound of swallows outside the window before we continued on - each was wonderful to spot.

 

In 2019, there was another journey waiting for us when we returned to Canada. Our house had been sold, our former jobs and routines were behind us, and within a week of completing our wider pilgrimage to Santiago, Muxía and Fisterra, we would be standing beside the Atlantic at Cape Spear, Newfoundland, beginning our walk west on the Trans Canada Trail. Through #Hike4Birds, birds, habitats, conservation and nature connection would soon become much more central parts of what we recorded and shared.

 

Yet I no longer think of the Camino Portugués simply as preparation for what came next.  The Camino  Portuguese had its own lessons to teach us, and perhaps one of the most enduring was that we had already begun learning how to look. The Camino Francés and Via Podiensis had opened that door, and Portugal carried us farther through it. What changed here was our understanding that attention did not need to wait for “untrammelled wilderness” and national parks to find wonder.  The natural world did not disappear simply because human life surrounded it.  In cities, near factories, and sewage ponds, nature can thrive and is still amazing. 

 

When we eventually stood at Cape Spear looking west across a continent we could scarcely imagine walking across, we carried that understanding with us. We would spend the following years travelling through forests and wetlands, cities and suburbs, agricultural land, highways, rail corridors and communities large and small. Some places would be spectacular. Others would initially seem ordinary.

 

Move slowly. Remain curious. Look again. After all, there is almost always more living beside the path than we first imagined.

 

See you on the Way!