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
