This past week has mostly been grey and wet so I had only managed to add a handful of species to my 2021 list, including this Middle Spotted Woodpecker (as difficult as always to photograph) and a rare-for-Brussels Shelduck. Yesterday, however, was a beautiful, sunny but frosty day so I headed back to the coast to try the polders. First, though, I made another visit to the Spuikom in Ostend, where I easily saw the Long-tailed Duck I missed last weekend. The polders were disappointing for geese as I only managed to find Barnacle and White-fronted, but I had a great day nevertheless.
Pintails are such elegant ducks and occur regularly but mainly in small numbers in Belgium so it is always a treat to see them, especially the chocolate-headed drakes. Other good additions to my year-list included Wigeon, 40+ Ruff, 70+ Golden Plover, a Bittern in flight, a second-winter male Hen Harrier and my first Zitting Cisticola in Belgium since 2008! This species used to breed along the coast until a series of cold winters around ten years ago wiped them out and they have been slowly returning to their former areas ever since, the mild winters of the past few years accelerating things a little. Best of all, though, were the owls. The polders are the best place in Belgium to see Short-eared Owls, and there was a huge crowd assembled to watch and photograph them, with the first bird out hunting early, well before 4pm. I also finally got to see the Long-eared Owl roost behind the visitor centre, counting six birds, one of which was enjoying the sun.
The roost requires quite a detour from the route I normally take so I'd never managed to see it before, especially since I used to have a much more accessible roost closer to Brussels which has long since disappeared as a result of disturbance. A charm of around a dozen Goldfinches were my final new bird for the year of the day, taking my list to 103 species so far, which is by far the earliest I've reached the 100-species mark.
