Wet and windy

Pretty much the whole of February has been wet and very windy, which explains the lack of recent updates.  Since my last post, I've only been out birding three times; a short walk in the forest, adding Middle Spotted Woodpecker to my year list, a visit to my Brussels patch, and, last week, a trip to a lake in West Flanders which usually has Bittern.  The Bittern failed to show but this male Goldeneye was hanging out with his Tufted friends and I actually got to see a Cetti's Warbler which I usually have to be content with only hearing.  That was my 110th species of the year and it shouldn't be long now until the first Chiffchaffs arrive, getting spring migration underway.  Despite the first sunny morning in weeks, there was no sign of any in my local park this morning.

Wet, wet, wet

Yesterday, it was time for my annual wild goose chase around Zeeland but, despite the very wet and windy weather, I did not end up wishing I was lucky!  We had decided the conditions only really allowed for birding from the car so our first stop was this rather bedraggled female Great Bustard from the German release project.  Hatched in an incubator last May, she was then released into the dwindling bustard population in the state of Brandenburg, only to disappear around 10 November.  She was subsequently found in the delta south of Rotterdam on 28 December and has remained faithful to the same field ever since, making for a very easy twitch.  She did not seem to be enjoying the rain at all although she did perk up after a while and start feeding, and her field was also home to several Mute Swans so there must be plenty of food there.  Having driven right up to our main target of the day, we still had plenty of time left and thus decided to move to another area where 5 Whooper Swans and 50 Tundra Bean Geese had been reported.  On the way there, though, we discovered our own flock of at least 450 Tundra Bean Geese (!) and passed flock upon flock of Barnacle Geese.  By the time we eventually reached our second destination, we must have seen well over 6000 Barnacles at the very least and, sure enough, I immediately spotted 5 large, white blobs in the distance which turned out to be the Whoopers.

As you may have noticed, the two geese on the right were part of the original 50 Tundra Bean Geese we were hoping to find but, by now, our tally of this species was close to 600 birds.

We then turned our attention to some other species, finding good numbers of Pintail, Goldeneye, Red-breasted Merganser and Golden Plover, as well as around 20 Bar-tailed Godwits, which must have stayed for the winter.  The geese still had one final surprise up their sleeve, however, as we then found a couple of small flocks of Brent Geese to end a very succesful wild goose chase, and we didn't even get wet!