MSW porn!

My patch on the edge of Brussels is extremely popular with photographers, who scatter generous helpings of seed to attract the commoner woodland species such as Nuthatch and the various tits.  The birds have become habituated to humans, therefore, and are pretty fearless. During a brief dry spell last week, I took a little walk there with the obligatory bag of birdseed in my pocket and a Robin started singing for its meal as soon as I arrived.  It began feeding at my fingertips before I'd even emptied the bag but I then took a step back and waited for the feeding frenzy to begin.  Within a couple of minutes, the local Middle Spotted Woodpecker came in and stayed long enough for me to get some ridiculous close-ups of our most attractive woodpecker, of which I've always struggled to get good shots in the past.

This particular location was already the most reliable site for MSW in the whole of Belgium but, now that they are coming in to the handouts, it is pretty much guaranteed!

A little piece of Iceland, perhaps

As mentioned in my last post, we had a cold snap at the end of February, with the temperature in Brussels dropping to minus eight and daytime temperatures around or just below freezing.  By last weekend, it was thankfully over, so I decided to check if our long-staying Pygmy Cormorant was still around.  It was, but there wasn't much else of interest so I headed back via Woluwe Park since it was sunny in the hope of finding some displaying woodpeckers.  I did hear a distant Lesser Spotted but was unable to locate it so had to make do with a pair of Great Spotted instead.  A football pitch there always seems to attract Redwings and I heard their familiar calls as soon as I approached, before this individual flushed from the ground and perched in a bush at eye-level.

The heavy blotching instead of spotting or streaking on the breast and very dark back immediately struck me as unusual and alarm bells started ringing since those are the two main characteristics of the Icelandic subspecies coburni.  That this subspecies can be distinguished in the field has only become apparent in the past couple of years and there is very little information available on how to tell them from the nominate race.  As a result, it is still a very rare bird in Belgium with only three accepted records.  This race overwinters in the UK, however, where there was heavy snow for five consecutive days prior to my observation so it makes sense that an Icelandic Redwing unable to forage there would continue its south-easterly trajectory and end up in Brussels.  Nobody here seems willing to stick their neck out and confirm my identification as the 4th Icelandic Redwing for Belgium but I'm happy that's what it was.  As a comparison, here is my picture of a bird of the nominate race.  Although the above individual is sitting in the shade, the darker shade of brown (almost dark chocolate as opposed to milk chocolate) is evident, as are the heavy markings on the breast and especially flanks, where very little white is showing compared to the other bird.