The Mipit show!

I spent my first day of the year at the Belgian coast yesterday in the hope of seeing some migration and what a day it was!  There was a constant stream of Meadow Pipits going past as soon as I got to the lookout and a very half-hearted attempt at counting them resulted in 120 in the first half hour.  It was pretty futile, however, as they were passing on both sides of the sea dyke, so I gave up and concentrated on picking out other things, the best of which were a pair of adult Mediterranean Gulls which passed at eye level.  There were also quite a few Linnets, my first Sand Martin of the year, and a small group of Common Scoters loafing around on the sea.  I'd noticed, though, that the strong breeze was causing a lot of the landbirds to migrate behind the sea dyke so I headed down into the polders, where wave upon wave of Meadow Pipit just kept on coming, with clouds of them rising from the fields.  I don't think I've ever seen quite so many and it was pretty obvious something big was going on.  Sure enough, another single observer with a lot more staying power did a full morning's count where I had just been, tallying 7088 Meadow Pipits, whilst the 30+ pairs of eyes at the Breskens migration count, just 40km along the coast, resulted in a phenomenal total of 100,750 for the day. That is a LOT of Meadow Pipits but, regardless of the totals, it was a wonderful sight to witness.  Whatever it was that had concentrated the Mipit migration, produced a lot of other migrants too.  I saw perhaps 20 or so migrating Mediterranean Gulls during the course of the day, with dozens of both Whimbrel and Wheatear, plus a group of 5 Greenshanks.  Other birds in the polders included a pair of Black-winged Stilts and lots of singing Sedge Warblers, whilst the biggest suprise of the day were six migrating Ring Ouzels, two of which showed well as they stopped off to feed in a meadow.  After all that migration madness, I headed to Ostend to twitch this summer-plumaged Red-necked Grebe which has been there for a few days, taking the day's total to 72 species.

Happy families

A Barn Swallow flew straight past my balcony on its way north today and I saw a few more, together with my first House Martins of the year, on my Brussels patch.  While our summer visitors are just returning, some of our resident species have got a significant headstart and are already busy bringing up their babies.  So far, I've seen several Mallard ducklings, a family of 8 Egyptian goslings, plus these four spiky-feathered baby herons in one of the heronry's four occupied nests.

April Blackcaps

The few Blackcaps which had arrived by the end of March have now been joined by many more so that Blackcap song is absolutely everywhere at the moment.  Yesterday, I visited my old patch to the north of Brussels for the first time since September, seeing or hearing a respectable 62 species.  Quite a few of these were summer migrants, including my first Swallow of the year and a rather early Whitehroat, the other additions to my year list being Snipe, Green Sandpiper, Little Ringed Plover, Stonechat and a splendid, male Bluethroat.