Spoonbill September

I've been to the coast twice over the past eight days, first to Nieuwpoort last weekend together with a couple of visiting birders.  We saw three Spoonbill and several Little Egrets on the estuary there, with a nice little fall of migrants providing a Whinchat and Stonechat perched side by side for comparison.  We also had a late Turtle Dove in flight and got great views of a female Firecrest having tracked her calls through the bushes for a good 20 minutes or so.  The day before yesterday, I took another visitor to Uitkerkse Polder, having started early with a few hours on the edge of the forest in Brussels.  The polders themselves were very quiet and exceptionally dry, one of the most productive ponds now being a flowering mass of Michaelmas Daisies instead!  It was a good day for Spoonbill migration, however, as we had two groups of around 50 and 30 birds within 15 minutes of each other, plus this lone juvenile feeding succesfully in front of one of the hides.  We didn't do too badly for raptors either, seeing Kestrel, Buzzard, two Marsh Harriers, a Peregrine and two Sparrowhawks, one of which we watched trying to catch a Goldfinch.  It was a long day but the combination of forest in Brussels and coast produced a day list of 67 species, which is not bad considering most of the breeding shorebirds had gone and the only geese to have arrived were a flock of around 70 Barnacles.

Giant tit attack!

This time last week, I tried some seawatching at the coast.  We'd had strong north-westerlies the previous weekend producing lots of goodies including Sooty Shearwater, Storm Petrel and dozens of skuas yet, despite similar winds, there was just nothing flying. 
After an hour and a half, all I'd managed to see was one Mediterranean Gull, one Little Gull, a few Sandwich Terns, and one juvenile Gannet.  For some reason, I always seem to pick the wrong day for my infrequent seawatches, except for the phenomenal day in September 2004 when I had my lifer Sabine's Gull and Leach's Storm Petrels (five of them!), as well as several Pomarine, Arctic and Great Skuas, Fulmar, 3 Manx Shearwater and a Grey Phalarope all battling their way alongside the pier in Ostend.  That day seemed like centuries ago, however, and I had to make do with this portait of a Lesser Black-backed Gull instead.

 

The biggest surprise of the day was waiting for me when I got back to Brussels and suddenly noticed this huge wall-painting of a Blue Tit on my way home.  Brussels is well-known for its wall-paintings and all sorts of things have been popping up lately but I was amazed to discover this magnificent, brand new piece of artwork just around the corner.  Kudos to the artist, Steve Locatelli!

Pretty in pink

Earlier this week, I had a walk around Kalmthout Heath.  It was very hot and quiet apart from a family of Black Woodpeckers which were making a lot of noise.  I also got to see Crested Tit, a migrant Whinchat, and several Grayling butterflies which are very localised in Belgium, being found only on sandy heathlands and in the dunes along the coast.  For some reason, there weren't many dragonflies around, forcing a juvenile Hobby to have a go at catching a White Wagtail instead.  The heather was in full bloom, however, producing these wonderful expanses of pink and purple carpeting the heath in every direction.