Big Belgian day (and a half)

I've always wanted to try a big day in Belgium to see just how many species I can find but have never got round to it, mainly due to the early start required and lots of travelling this would involve.  I guided for a visiting birder from Texas at the weekend, however, who told me he wanted to see as many species as possible since it was his first time here.  We thus met up at 6am Saturday and got off to a great start with a singing Grey Wagtail and migrant Lesser Whitethroat right in the centre of Brussels.  We then took the train to Mechels Broek, just outside Mechelen, where a singing Cuckoo greeted us and we had impeccable timing, arriving in the hide just before a migrating group of 7 Greenshank and one juvenile Ruff arrived to refuel.  By the end of the morning session there, the day list was already at 65 species.  We then headed towards the coast and the Uitkerkse Polders, where Black-tailed Godwits, Lapwings and Redshanks were displaying.  Our amazing timing continued as we arrived near the visitor centre just as the two Black-winged Stilts, which had arrived earlier in the week, flew in, only to have moved on again by the time we headed back.

We also finally got cracking views of a Bluethroat singing from a fencepost, having seen just one in silhouette in the early morning twilight at Mechels Broek.  The biggest excitement of the day, however, was provided by a mixed group of wagtails.  As Yellow Wagtail was one of our target species, I had just said "If any wagtails are around, they'll be here amongst the sheep", when we spotted our first Pied, accompanied by three White Wagtails.  The group also held four Yellow Wagtails of the British race flavissima plus a very unusual looking bird, which I thought might be an immature or hybrid Citrine Wagtail.  I put the word out and some other birders at the coast managed to get some decent pictures of it with lots of discussion as result but, in the end, it seems like it was just an unusually coloured Blue-headed Wagtail.  We then had a mad dash to Heist, where a Ring Ouzel had been reported earlier in the day, but to no avail so we headed back to Brussels having walked around 18km and seen or heard 85 species in total.
The following morning, we met early again for three hours around my Brussels patch before work (!) to try and add some woodland species, culminating in wonderful views of a pair of Middle Spotted Woodpeckers.  Our final bird of the morning was a heard-only Reed Warbler, the first of the year for the Brussels region and our 96th species in one and a half days.

Like clockwork

It's that time of year again when you really need to get out every couple of days just to keep up with all the migrant species arriving.  I'm well behind since I did very little during the second half of March, my days off always seeming to coincide with the worst weather.  As a result, the only migrants I managed to connect with last month were White Stork, Chiffchaff, Garganey and Blackcap.  Blackcaps usually arrive by the end of March and I heard my first of the year in my neighbouring park on 26 March.  I'm always amazed how migrants somehow arrive bang on time, regardless of the prevailing weather conditions.  Swifts, for example, have usually arrived in the skies above Brussels around 30 April each year, but it would seem that Pallid Harriers have an internal clock to make even Swiss watchmakers jealous.  A male Pallid Harrier passed the migration watchpoint at Breskens (NL) on 31 Mar 2017 at 11h35.  This year, what was almost certainly the same individual, since Pallid Harriers are few and far between along the Belgian and Dutch coasts, passed the same watchpoint on 31 Mar at 11h25; on the exact same day and just ten minutes earlier than a year before!

A pair of Black Redstarts and this dapper White Wagtail have returned to my Brussels patch and, yesterday, I visited the Belgian equivalent of Breskens to seem some migration for myself.  We didn't get any Pallid Harriers but I did see a four-figure amount of Meadow Pipits, with well over 100 each of both Linnet and Brambling.  Other highlights were around 50 Swallows, 26 Spoonbill, 3 Great White Egret, 3 Marsh Harrier, one Black Kite and one Short-eared Owl.  Of course, I only saw a fraction of the 23,000+ birds passing and arrived too late for the Ring Ouzel but the total day count, a cumulative effort by around 30 observers, can be found here.