February has been predominantly wet and very windy so most of my birding has been from my apartment, where a pair of Nuthatches have been regularly visiting my balcony. A few of the local Monk Parakeets spent a couple of days refurbishing last year's Magpie nest before deciding that wasn't the kind of real estate they were looking for. I did try a twitch in the rain to the male Falcated Duck, which has been bouncing around a couple of sites on the border between Flemish Brabant and Limburg, but it failed to show. This past week, though, the sun came out and it suddenly felt like spring, especially when a Brimstone, my first butterfly of the year, appeared during a walk around my Brussels patch. Pretty much everything that sings was in song, including a very vocal Middle Spotted Woodpecker simultaneously calling to his mate and excavating a nesthole, with a pair of Great Crested Grebes also displaying. The heronry, which started as just a single nest a few years ago, now contains six occupied nests!
