Spoilt for choice

This Waxwing, one of a group of four I twitched in the suburbs of Ghent last week, doesn't seem to know which way to turn with so many berries to choose from!  No wonder the birds are still there and have been hanging around the same residential area for at least ten days.  As the cold spell brought several goodies into Brussels, local birders also had plenty of choice, including a male Goldeneye (only my second within Brussels) in Boitsfort and this female Scaup showing very well (my first in Brussels) at Neerpede.

Towards the end of last week, and without trying too hard, I even managed a Brussels day list of 52 species, the highlights being a group of 4 Bullfinches feeding on my regular patch, a Great White Egret, and this Kingfisher fishing in a tiny ice-free pond.

The biggest twitch (part 2)

 
Having seen it so well the previous day, I no longer needed the extra morning I had planned in Hirtshals just in case, and so headed down to Aalborg instead, where I joined birdingpal Vagn Freundlich for a visit to Lille Vildmose.  On the drive in, we already spotted a big group of around 200 Whooper Swans, whilst those on the reserve itself were accompanied by a nice, mixed flock of Taiga Bean, Barnacle, White-fronted and Pink-footed Geese.  It was great to see several hundred Taiga Bean Geese as I'd only ever seen two distant ones in Poland a few years ago and, this time around, I eventually managed to locate a small group of Tundra Bean Geese within the Taiga flock.  A Rough-legged Buzzard and around 70 Icelandic Redshanks were the other highlights before I headed back to Zealand to visit friends in Helsingør.  Here, I had a couple of hours the following morning around the harbour, which was dominated by this wonderful fish sculpture made out of rubbish.

There were also a couple of Eiders, a female Common Scoter, and a few Gannets fishing offshore, before I had to leave for my flight home, very satisfied with my little Danish detour to add Siberian Accentor to my list.

The biggest twitch (part 1)

I do not consider myself a twitcher.  I'd much rather see an uncommon bird on my local patch than travel half way across the country, or even beyond, for the likes of an American vagrant I've seen plenty of in the US and which is probably doomed to die anyway.  There have been a few notable exceptions when it comes to lifers, such as the Falcated Duck in Zeeland or last year's Siberian Rubythroat but, even then, I generally try to work a long-staying rarity around an already planned excursion or at least plan some other birding nearby so that all is not lost should the target bird fail to show.
Last autumn's phenomenal and totally unprecented influx of Siberian Accentors really captivated me, however, so news of an overwintering individual in northern Denmark had me cogitating until a crazy urge finally got the better of my sense of reason and I decided to go for it!  After an extremely long, overnight train journey Brussels-Cologne-Hamburg-Copenhagen, I crossed the whole of Denmark and finally made it to Hirtshals two hours late and just after sunset, thus missing the first of three chances I had to connect with THE bird.  The following morning I was wide awake in anticipation well before sunrise and my 9am rendez-vous with a local birder.  After a brief detour for the immature Glaucous Gull (above) in the harbour plus the local, resident Crested Larks (the only ones in the whole of Scandinavia), we were soon standing at the bush the iron sparrow (as the Danes call it) had been reliably frequenting the previous days.  It started snowing, we paced up and down and scoured the vegetation but all we could find were Dunnocks.  Just my luck, I thought, for some Dunnocks to have moved in and chased it off after a 69-day stay!  We were soon joined by a third birder yet, after an hour of searching, there was still no sign of the bird and I was beginning to think it had all been in vain.  There had been a group of Fieldfares moving around all morning and perching on some distant bushes so I was occasionally looking at them, spotting a few other birds mixed in.  A dozen or so Greenfinches, a bright, male Yellowhammer, a Whinchat.  Hang on, though!  Whinchats do NOT occur in Denmark mid-winter but what else would have a yellowish breast and a black face mask?  Shit, Siberian Accentor, but just as the realisation hit me, the bird flew up and towards us dropping down quickly into some very thick scrub.  Surely that was not all I was going to get but, thankfully, after a few more nerve-wracking minutes, it popped up again allowing me to get this first record shot.

Siberian Accentor (not a Whinchat!), 17 Jan 2017 (Day 70), Hirtshals, Denmark

It then flew over the road back to its favourite bush, where it started feeding at point-blank range for the next hour or so.  Phew!  What a beauty, and many thanks to Kurt and Vagn for their precious help.

A glowing start

Well, I had hoped to start the year off with a big day to try and reach 100 species but the weather put paid to those plans so I ended up just having a half-day at my Brussels patch instead, where I saw or heard just 40 species.  The light was making the colours of this lone Red-crested Pochard glow, and our regular, female Ferruginous Duck, here for five winters in a row, was also there.  Since then, I've added a handful of species around Brussels, not least a pair of Peregrines I spotted from the tram as it passed by the church of Watermael-Boitsfort, where they nest each year, thus taking my 2017 list to 47 species so far.

2016 review

Here, as usual, is my month-by-month review of my birding highlights from the past year (lifers are in CAPS).

January - PINE BUNTING (The Netherlands); a successful twitch to the overwintering female in Zeeland.
February - Bittern (Brussels); on my third attempt, I finally got to see the elusive Bittern at my patch, only for there to be two birds together a few days later.
March - Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (Brussels); my first at my local patch (after more than 15 years!) discovered by chance whilst trying to locate a noisy Jay.
April - LITTLE BUSTARD (Spain); several birds seen well, including two in display flight, during a guided tour with Catalan Bird Tours.
May - Marsh Warbler (Brussels and Mechels Broek); being the only observer to have recorded this species at my Brussels patch, I was wondering if I may have been mistaken, when I finally got confirmation by hearing and seeing one there late in the month.
June - DIADEMED TANAGER (Brazil); one of the first species I saw at our accommodation near Itatiaia National Park and seen every day during my short stay there.

July - SCALED GROUND-CUCKOO (Brazil); the birder's holy grail (see below)!
August - PAINT-BILLED CRAKE (Brazil); following hot on the heels of a Grey-breasted Crake, this was found in exactly the same spot and is even rarer at Cristalino than the Ground-Cuckoo, with only two previous records for the area.

September - Spotted Crake (The Netherlands); I thought I'd missed this bird as I was blocked by reeds when it first appeared, only for it to reappear out in the open once I'd given up on it.
October - Hume's Leaf Warbler (Blankenberge); my 2nd ever and first in Belgium at the end of a long day with lots of birds but no other rarities.
November - Long-tailed Duck (Ostend); three succesfully twitched on the Spuikom in Ostend.  Only my second observation in Belgium and my first ones in over five years!
December - Black-throated Diver (Genval); a very confiding first-winter just outside of Brussels.

The bird of the year title just has to go to the enigmatic Scaled Ground-Cuckoo.  I never even dreamed I might be lucky enough to see such a difficult bird yet I saw it at my first attempt, thanks to an invitation by my friend Rich Hoyer to tag along with his group.  You can get an idea of why it is the most desired species in the Amazon by reading his write-up here.  Suffice to say another guide at the lodge tried a dozen times and never got to see it.  Not so for photographer George Lin, however, who also saw (and photographed) it and has kindly let me use his picture.

During 2016 I saw or heard just 167 species in Belgium (since I did a lot of travelling), 268 in Europe, plus another 544 in Brazil, making a year list of 812 species, my second-highest ever!
Lifers in Europe were the Pine Bunting, Siberian Rubythroat, the Spanish sextet of Rock Sparrow, Little Bustard, heard-only Dupont's Lark, Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, Great Spotted Cuckoo and Black Wheatear, plus heard-only Great Snipe in Sweden.  My first trip to the Atlantic rainforest provided 85 lifers, with an unexpected total of eight during my fifth summer season in the Amazon, making 102 lifers for the year.  I very much doubt 2017 will bring me as many but I'll certainly give it a try, perhaps starting with the Franklin's Gull which has been frequenting the Meuse near Liège!