Bye bye winter

Within one week of me standing in the snow watching Woodcocks, our daytime temperatures had increased by a ridiculous twenty degrees. 
The cranes reacted immediately, with plenty of northbound migration as a result.  I thus did the long hike in the Ardennes I usually do each autumn, seeing around 900 cranes in total, plus several Red Kites.

Other new birds for the year included Lesser Redpoll, Bullfinch, lots of Crossbills, and a pair of Dippers I managed to find along the River Salm during my 20-minute wait at Trois-Ponts train station.

Before our winter visitors all disappear, I decided to try and add Bewick's Swan to my year list yesterday evening by visiting their roost on the Kalmthoutse Heide after work.  It was a beautiful evening as you can see below but the swans didn't arrive until 19:17, by which time it was almost dark and I was already on my way back.  They flew right over me calling, however, so I at least heard them, taking my list to 130 species by the end of February.

The deep freeze part 2

The subzero temperatures finally abated last weekend and it is now feeling like spring!  On Saturday, though, I headed to the coast in the hope of seeing some of the huge influx of Woodcocks the heavy snowfall had brought.  At first, I only got the typical views of birds flying away from me but, with a lot of patience and a bit of luck, I finally got to watch three of them feeding on the ground.  It has probably been around thirty years since I last saw a Woodcock feeding, as opposed to displaying or being flushed.  They were hopelessly ensconced amongst a jumble of branches so I fired off a couple of pictures without really expecting to get anything recognisable but am very pleased with the result.  In the second picture below you can even make out a second one between the tree-trunks on the right.  By the time I'd finished my walk, I had had at least a dozen Woodcock sightings involving eight or more individuals in a relatively small area.  A few other year ticks such as Goosander, Rock Pipit and both Knot and Grey Plover feeding amongst 130 or so Sanderling took my 2021 list to 120 species so far.

The deep freeze

Belgium got off lightly last weekend with just a couple of centimetres of snow in Brussels, while ten times that amount fell in The Netherlands and large parts of Germany.  Temperatures, though, have plummeted with daytime maxima just below freezing and nights down to minus 13°C!  It was minus 9°C when I wrapped up warm and headed out to my Brussels patch this morning.  One of the first birds I saw was a Kingfisher along the still flowing stream, and most of the ducks plus no less than 11 Little Grebes were concentrated on the small area of open water where it enters one of the ponds, the rest of which have frozen over completely.  

There were lots of Redwings around, many of them feeding on ivy berries whereas this individual had discovered some apple at the feeding station.  A group of at least twenty Siskins were also nice to watch but their acrobatic feeding technique made them ever so difficult to photograph.

Working my way around the main pond, I noticed the areas with plenty of overhanging branches also had a few, small patches of open water, which were crowded with our resident female Ferruginous Duck, a Great Crested Grebe and this American couple getting lovey-dovey ready for Valentine's Day.

After 4 hours I had recorded 49 species but by far the biggest surprise was a medium-sized bat fluttering around at midday and drinking from the open water.  I can only assume it had been disturbed from wherever it was hibernating since it is unlikely to find any food now.