Home and away

I've seen some good birds from home lately, including this immature Sparrowhawk and a bright, male Brambling, my only one of the year so far, accompanying a group of Greenfinches.  Since my last post, I tried revisiting the Ross's Gull in Nieuwpoort but the silly thing was absent for most of the day and didn't show up til mid-afternoon, long after I'd given up and moved on to the polders instead.  I still had a good, winter day's birding, though, with plenty of waders around, including around 200 Dunlin and at least 400 Golden Plovers, plus a hunting Hen Harrier, some Pink-footed Geese and a big group of around 80 Gannets fishing offshore.  Yesterday, I did my annual winter tour around Zeeland which I had to skip last year due to Covid-related travel restrictions.  It was the first time I'd been to The Netherlands since August 2020!  We must have seen several thousand Golden Plovers, with good numbers of Barnacle Geese, a few Brent Geese, at least five Spotted Redshank, Purple Sandpiper, a male and 2 female Smew, Eider and Red-breasted Merganser.  I've only had one other, short birding walk in the Sonian Forest which was fairly quiet but did reveal two pairs of Bullfinch, yet my year-list has made good progress nonetheless and now stands on 109 species (96 in Belgium).

Red-breasted Merganser by Theo Hortensius

Let's twitch again

After all the chasing after new species for last year's Belgian big year, I decided that, this year, I would only twitch lifers or new birds for my Belgian list.  I didn't expect to be at it again quite so soon but today twitched this female Ring-billed Gull in the province of Antwerp.  Interestingly, she was first discovered to be in Belgium on 27 December without anyone actually seeing her, based on the GPS signal from the transmitter on her back.  It didn't take long for people to find her, though, and she's been entertaining the crowds ever since since.  Today, she was in her favourite field for catching worms, together with a couple of Common Gulls.  She was fitted with the transmitter in Poland and is at least 19 years old!

The end of an era!

Our female Ferruginous Duck is no more!  First found on my Brussels patch on 13 December 2012, during a severe cold spell which resulted in virtually all other open water in the area freezing over, my past two visits have failed to find her and she was last seen on 11 November.  A presumed adult in 2012, that would mean she reached the grand old age of 10 (back in 1987, the oldest-known, wild individual was only 8 years old).  The next two pictures show how she has matured over the years, the first being taken in December 2012, the second in January 2018.

As you can see, she became much more male-like with maturity, resulting in several mistaken reports of male birds.  She is also the individual wild bird I have gotten to know the best in all my time birdwatching.  Until autumn 2019, she would disappear to parts unknown for the summer but, presumably since going through duck menopause (I'm not making that up!), has not bothered to migrate and remained here all year-round, making her the one and only resident Ferruginous Duck in the whole of Belgium.  I have thus taken dozens of visitors to see her over the years and knew all of her favourite places so I rarely had a visit to my patch without finding her.  She would also allow me to get very close before calmly swimming away.  Very much a loner, she was occasionally found in the company of Tufted Ducks, attracting the attentions of bachelor males, and I even saw her being courted by a male Wood Duck once.  Goodness know what the resulting hybrids would have looked like had that succeeded!

My year-listing, despite seeing 53 species on on near my Brussels patch yesterday, doesn't quite feel the same without her.  I'll miss you, Fergie.