It's been a mad, mad week of migration here in Brussels (and elsewhere)! So far this autumn, there has been very little sign of migration from my balcony but things started to happen on Monday, with small numbers of various species passing, including at least 21 Fieldfare, 2 Redwing, 2 Song Thrush, 4 late Swallows, several Skylark, Linnet and the first Merlin for my flat list. Heading home from work at 11pm, I could still hear Redwings and Song Thrushes passing over the centre of Brussels so it was clear something big was happening. By Tuesday morning, the floodgates had well and truly opened as I went out onto my balcony to the sight of groups of birds all over the sky. It was chaos and I didn't know where to look, let alone attempt some kind of count, but I reckon I probably saw around 1000 Redwings and at least 100 Song Thrushes, together with smaller numbers of Blackbird, Fieldfare and Skylark. A Peregrine joined in the fun, as did a big formation of 38 Cormorants, and I simply lost a migrating Sparrowhawk amongst the clouds of Redwings passing through my field of view! A quick tour of my local park just ahead of some light drizzle had Redwings literally dropping out of the sky. I hadn't seen such concentrated migration of one species since the Skylarks of October 2016, and trektellen.nl confirmed my suspicions as migration counts all over the Benelux had smashed their day records for Redwing, with 2480 counted elsewhere in Brussels and a couple of Belgian sites reporting over 20,000 of them. Flamborough Head in the UK had over 32,000 of them arrive in what the observer described as one of the biggest Redwing movements recorded in recent times and the most impressive thing he'd seen in over 30 years of migration counting, while the well-manned site just outside The Hague somehow managed to count 255,676 Rewings going past! By Wednesday morning, it was all over, with only 61 Redwing and very little else passing over during half an hour spent on my balcony, although a group of 5 Greylag Goose were also new for my flat list. With all this madness going on, I just had to get to the coast and thus spent a few hours in Zeebrugge on Thursday morning before work. There had been an obvious, overnight fall of Goldcrests, plus several Firecrests, and the aftermath of Tuesday's thrush tsunami was still evident, with groups of Redwings feeding everywhere, accompanied by one Fieldfare and this stonking Ring Ouzel.
I also found a Lesser Whitethroat, which, so late in the year, is more likely to be of the Siberian subspecies blythi, although they cannot reliably be separated from the nominate race in the field. By Friday, things seemed to have settled down but a morning tour of my local park had me stumped as I twice heard an unusual call I didn't recognise before the unseen, calling bird seemed to move off into the walled garden of the Indian embassy. I didn't have a clue what it was but knew I had never heard this call before so I spent most of the evening listening to various calls until I found the perfect match - a Greenish Warbler!!! OMG, what a find that would have been but, of course, there was no trace of it this morning, although I did get home just in time to first hear and then see a group of 30+ White-fronted Geese pass over my balcony!
