Record shot?

Record shot is the term we generally use for a terrible photo of a rare bird, just to prove you really did see it, whereas I doubt the above even qualifies as that.  This pale brown blob sitting on the windowledge of a Ghent hospital is my first Crag Martin in Belgium which I succesfully twitched yesterday. This is a very rare bird in Belgium with only four accepted records until this year, and at least another four this autumn as part of an influx which also brought several Pallid Swifts to north-western Europe.  It was actually flying when I arrived but immediately landed and didn't move from this spot for the next hour, although I could see it was actively on the lookout for insects.  Hopefully, its lethargy was more due to the cold, overcast conditions rather than its physical condition.  Typically, just three minutes after the standing around in the cold waiting for it to do something got the better of me and I moved on, it decided to fly again!

The final countdown

My Dusky Warbler twitch to the coast took my Belgian year list to 195 species, which is nowhere near my all-time record of 225 but not too bad considering I spent most of the spring migration stuck in Brussels.  I thus decided to have a go at reaching 200 by the end of the year.  There was, incidentally, a veritable deluge of Dusky Warblers along the Belgian coast this past weekend, with at least nine, possibly 11, different individuals observed on Saturday which is more than we usually get in an entire year.  As I'd seen my one so well, I resisted the temptation to go back for more and instead went to the best site I know for Great Bittern.  Within ten minutes of arriving at the hide, one flew right past and disappeared into the reedbed.  One down, four to go!  I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of it in flight but I did finally succeed in getting one of a Long-tailed Tit, a challenge I set myself back in February of last year and eventually gave up on after about a month of trying.

Dusky double

Lifers are just like buses!  After having to wait over nine months between my first and second of the year, a third comes along just three weeks later.  This time it was a Dusky Warbler, which was found in Bredene on Friday and I succesfully twitched over the weekend.  As is often the case with birds I see for the very first time, I concentrated on getting a good look at it rather than fumbling with my camera and ending up not even seeing it well.  I was very lucky, too, as I got a great view of it sitting out in the open in a patch of reeds whereas most people had to be content with brief glimpses or only hearing it call, which it was doing constantly.  There was also this nice, frosty-looking Siberian Chiffchaff, in the same park.  I then moved to the polders for the afternoon and waited until it got dark so I could see the Short-eared Owls hunting, one of which had a brief tussle with a hunting, immature Hen Harrier which had intruded into its airspace.  A Barn Owl glimpsed very briefly in the dark and then heard calling on the way back was my 62nd species of the day.

V is for Vielsalm

Crane migration really got underway last week, with a phenomenal 11,399 being counted along the German border in just a few hours on Thursday evening.  I thus decided yesterday was a good day to go down to the Ardennes in the hope of intercepting some.  Vielsalm station is nestled in a steep-sided river valley which dominates the landscape for miles around and acts as a funnel for migrating birds, so I thought that was my best bet and I wasn't wrong!  I already spotted 12 low-flying Cranes from the train as we were pulling into the station and, an hour later, I had counted 1,884 of them, with several of the groups passing directly overhead.

I still hadn't moved more than 100m from the train station, though, so I eventually pulled myself away and went for a walk in the surrounding forest, with a few more, large groups of high-flying cranes taking my day's tally to 2262.

A single Red Kite also joined in the migration and it was strange to see groups of Woodpigeons accompanying the cranes, whilst a group of migrating Fieldfares were doing their own thing.  The forest was rather quiet although I did locate a group of around 30 Common Crossbills, some of which were singing, which I don't get to hear very often.