I've done very little birding since I got home from Brazil, except for one morning of guiding around Mechels Broek which only produced around 40 species, the most exciting of which was a Ruddy Shelduck! Migration is well underway but there has been little of interest to tempt me out until late yesterday afternoon, when a Greenish Warbler was found at the Belgian coast. It was still there this morning and a short walk from Heist train station so off I went. It was in a tiny migrant trap but ever so mobile and difficult to find. I saw it about four times during the hour I was there and got good but brief looks as well as hearing it give its distinctive, disyllabic call a few times. This is the first one I have seen, having made a long trip for the
last one in Belgium well over a year ago when I only managed to hear it singing. I was happy, therefore, just to see it but the finder of the bird had been sitting there all day trying to get some good pictures and eventually
succeeded. I continued down to the beach instead, finding no less than five Wheatears plus this Whinchat all lined up along a fence.
There were, in fact, lots of passerine migrants around, including another group of at least four Whinchats, two Pied Flycatchers, two Common Redstarts and a showy Firecrest. Best of all though and totally unexpected was the Osprey, which first looked as if it was migrating along the beach but then circled around for the longest time before trying to catch fish in the sea.
