Never the twain

Last Friday, the last day of October, it was 20°C yet, despite the springlike weather, there was a constant stream of migrants.  I was at the coast looking for geese with a visiting birder but it was hard to take our eyes off what was going on in the skies, with large groups of Starlings, Chaffinches and Skylarks, an impressive formation of around 160 Cormorants, and smaller numbers of Redwing, Linnet, Siskin and Reed Bunting all heading south.  We finally dragged ourselves away to search for geese, only to spot a Short-eared Owl migrating along the sea-dyke as we moved into the polders.  Once there, we found around 200 Pink-footed Geese, a few hundred White-fronts and a single Barnacle as well as the obligatory Greylags and Canadas.  Migration still continued in earnest, though, and, just after midday, an Osprey drifted slowly over but the surprise of the day was the unlikely combination of 8 White-fronts arriving in v-formation together with a single Spoonbill, which had difficulty keeping up with the geese as they twisted down to join the others already feeding on the ground.  As we reached Ostend in the late afternoon, a Brambling called as it passed overhead, taking our day's tally to an impressive 73 species, but the day's migration was not done yet as I could still hear Redwings passing over Brussels well into the night.