Accidental lifer

During my Cranberry Fritillary expedition to the Hautes Fagnes, and since I knew the area was also good for dragonflies, I made a conscious effort to photograph any odonata that would sit still long enough.  There were very few about, however, and this was one of just two species I managed to photograph, the other being a Four-spotted Chaser.  I fully expected this to be yet another common species and tentatively uploaded it to iNaturalist as an Azure Bluet, a species which I see pretty much everywhere, Brussels included.  My identification was soon corrected, however, as this is actually a female Spearhead Bluet or Northern Damselfly, a species which has disappeared from much of its former range and is now very rare in Belgium. 
Now I'm fast running out of new butterfly species to find in Belgium, I should perhaps start working on my odonata list!

Cranberry craziness

I finally managed to connect with my first Cranberry Fritillaries last weekend.  In Belgium, this species is restricted to peat bogs in the Ardennes and I have made several trips to try and find one over the years but only twice seen a distant fritillary in flight which may or may not have been another species.  This time, the reserve seemed very quiet at first but I soon spotted a fritillary feeding on a thistle and managed to fire off a few record shots.

I was, however, standing on a boardwalk in the middle of a bog so couldn't get any closer and the butterfly quickly dropped down into the grasses and disappeared.  I thus decided to try the cycle path surrounding the reserve since the verges had a lot more flowers than the bog itself plus my movements would be less restricted there.  This was a wise move since I soon saw another Cranberry Fritillary, then two more, and eventually counted around 20 individuals over the next hour or two!

B(erl)ingo!

I was back in Berlin again last weekend so just had to make another visit to my favourite birding spot, Moorlinse Buch.  The breeding Red-necked Grebes were not visible on the main lake but I did find this juvenile, complete with red neck, on an adjacent marshy pond.  I never realised they acquired their denominative colouration at such an early age.

I had, however, done a bit of butterfly research beforehand and noticed that one of my most wanted butterflies had been recorded a few times at another reserve just a short walk away.  I thus set out to explore the new area, not really expecting to have any luck but, as soon as I got there, I noticed my first Large Chequered Skipper feeding on flowers alongside the path!

It was the only one I saw, despite walking around for another two hours, so I could hardly believe my tiny bit of research had actually worked and got me this beautifully-patterned, rare butterfly which is probably extinct in Belgium.

POPLAR ADMIRAL!

Poplar Admiral is probably the rarest of Belgium's breeding butterflies, occurring in a single locality along the French border.  There are only ever a few individuals and they have a ridiculously short flying period of roughly two weeks, so that one only has a very small window, usually from mid-June, to try to see one.  Furthermore, they spend most of their time high up in the trees, only occasionally coming down to the ground.

I've been to their location several times over the past few years, but always too late.  This year's wet spring seems to have delayed things a little and it has been seen regularly this past week so, yesterday, I gave it a try.  A few White Admirals along the way were a good omen, as was this Purple Emperor in the car park as soon as I arrived.

Once in the reserve, however, it soon became apparent how few butterflies are already on the wing and several people had been looking for the admiral all morning without success.  After a while, I thus went off and explored the surrounding area, again seeing very little, but, once I got back to the reserve I found two guys with their cameras pointing at a muddy puddle.  They beckoned me over and there it was, a beautiful, male Poplar Admiral taking minerals from the mud.

At first, it stubbornly refused to open its wings but, after taking dozens of underwing shots, it eventually moved a little further and rested with its wings open!

Going by the reports, it looks like this individual was the only one seen all day, and then only for about an hour or so by just four people.  I was thus very lucky to finally get to see our rarest butterfly and my 83rd of the 90 or so regularly-occurring species in Belgium.

Nocturne

I've had some good owl karma this year, seeing both Tawny Owl and Long-eared Owl in January, a hunting Short-eared Owl in March and two new species during my US trip in April.  Two weekends ago, I tried an evening walk in the Sonian Forest and, although I heard at least three Tawny Owls, I was unable to locate any.  A visiting birder had mentioned Tawny Owl was on his target list, so I suggested we give it a try last weekend, confident we should at least hear them but not really expecting to see one.  We started much too early, however, and it took almost 90 minutes before we heard anything, but then we were suddenly surrounded by begging calls.  After a good amount of searching, I finally found a recently fledged Tawny Owl sitting in a sapling at eye level, with a myriad of dancing fireflies making the observation even more magical.  The Little Owls of Brussels, on the other hand, are not co-operating and have been hiding every time I have tried to see them so far this year, although I did find this Little Grebe sitting on an unusually exposed nest.

Stateside birding (part 3)

From Oakland, CA, I took the overnight train to Eugene, OR, waking up at 6am to wonderful views of Mount Shasta.  It rained for most of my 3.5 days in Oregon but that didn't stop us from birding from the Pacific coast up to the snow patches on Marys Peak, tallying around 150 species, including eight lifers.

The first was an immature White-winged Scoter amongst the hundreds of Surf Scoters on the sea, while this well-camouflaged Western Screech-Owl was only our second owl of day 2, having already seen a Northern Pygmy-Owl that morning.

Best of all, though, was my final morning spent in Skinner Butte, a park which rises above the city and acts as a migrant trap.  Here, we encountered a fall of over 100 warblers, at least half of which were Orange-crowned, with smaller numbers of Wilson's, Nashville, Black-throated Grey, Townsend's and 1 MacGillivray's, as well as several Warbling Vireos.  The main target of this trip was Hermit Warbler, the only western warbler I'd never seen, and there just had to be one somewhere amongst the madness but it took us a good couple of hours of checking every single warbler until we finally found it.

Stateside birding (part 2)

I then flew over the Rockies towards the San Francisco Bay Area, where I birded my old patches of Lake Merritt and Arrowhead Marsh in Oakland.  Here, I was glad to find this elusive Ridgway's Rail out in the open, since it was still known as a subspecies of Clapper Rail the last time I saw it.

We also went to Russian River, where there were lots of singing Wilson's Warblers and Black-headed Grosbeaks, an Osprey nest visible from our garden, and I even did some kayaking!  My final day in the Bay Area was spent in San Francisco itself, admiring the views and getting to see a small group of the city's famous Red-masked Parakeets in flight; the first new species (albeit an introduced one) of my trip.