The first half of this month was so horribly wet and windy that I only managed a few short outings to my Brussels patch as well as a brief twitch to the first-winter Iceland Gull along the canal. I made the most of a rare, sunny day mid-month by treating myself to a day at the coast, seeing two Short-eared Owls hunting in broad daylight, a flock of around 500 Barnacle Geese, and even bigger numbers of Curlew and Lapwing. Most interesting, however, was a small group of White-fronted Geese
which contained two orange-beaked individuals. They were not of the
Greenlandic race but regular
albifrons and both were juveniles,
so it would seem beak colouration may be more variable than is generally
thought, or at least developing with age.
The weather had improved by the third week so I had a day in the Ardennes where a heavy layer of snow had fallen, producing a magical winter wonderland. Unfortunately, though, most of the birds seemed to have retreated to
lower elevations as we saw very litttle all day long and, after an
hour-long walk in the forest, had only managed to find two Coal Tits,
two Crested Tits, plus a Goldcrest!
