May catch-up

After ten days of horribly wet and windy weather with very little opportunity to get out, it has finally turned nice again.  I thus managed to twitch this singing Melodious Warbler which has set up territory on some wasteland in Brussels.  Melodious Warbler used to be restricted to the south of Belgium and I would normally have to visit the area around Couvin to see one, but they seem to be rapidly expanding their range northwards, with several reported in Brussels over the past few days.  Icterine Warbler, on the other hand, seems to be decreasing, at least in Belgium, and is now much harder to find.  Yesterday, though, I saw two of them during a day spent at one of my favourite places in Limburg, where I tallied 71 species!  I also saw seven species of butterfly and my first dragonflies of the year, plus this freshly emerged damselfly I haven't yet identified. UPDATE: it's a teneral Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans).

Brabant bruisers

Two days ago, a group of 30 Griffon Vultures suddenly turned up in Belgium.  The advantage of such conspicuously large birds is that the network of birders is often able to follow their movements closely and, yesterday evening, they were seen going to roost in a forest in Walloon Brabant, a short walk from the nearest train station.  Another advantage is that they need strong thermals to get flying and, therefore, rarely take to the skies before 10am.  I thus decided to go early this morning and wait for them to get going.

This was the only bird visible upon my arrival and it didn't do anything for quite a while but eventually started waking up and having a stretch of those huge wings.

Before long, though, four were seen circling low over the forest, slowly increasing in numbers until we had a thermal of 23 birds, with another passing right over us to join them.

This is only the second time I have seen multiple Griffons in Belgium, after a similar-sized group back in June 2007, and I felt like I had been transported back to my raptor-counting days in Israel.  Most interesting of all, though, was the magnetic attraction a thermal of vultures has on other raptor species in the area; they were temporarily joined by two Black Kites (quite rare in this part of Belgium), two Honey Buzzards, a Goshawk and a Sparrowhawk, as well as Common Buzzard and Kestrel.