Purple and pink

I was back in the polders yesterday, guiding for an English couple visiting Belgium.  We started with 6 Purple Sandpiper feeding alongside Blankenberge pier and the very last birds of the day were a flock of around 120 Pink-footed Geese.  In the meantime, we also managed to find 2 Firecrest, 2 Dunlin, 3 Snipe, 2 different Hen Harriers, a Marsh Harrier and 3 Long-eared Owls, with a day total of 63 species.  Although we saw Pink-footed, White-fronted, Barnacle and Greylag Geese, the numbers of geese in the polders were not huge, no doubt due to the very mild weather.  The thousands of Lapwings, on the other hand, were putting on a magnificent show, with large groups constantly flying around.  At one point, we even had a two-tier flock made up of Lapwings and around 400 Golden Plovers above them.

Still learning

No matter how long one has been birding, there are always difficult birds to challenge one's identification skills.  Earlier this month, I saw this falcon at the coast in an area where Kestrel is abundant so that was my initial reaction.  As I got closer, however, the small size and dark colouration had me convinced it was a Merlin instead so I took a few photo's to make sure.  Merlin is a bird I get to see less than annually and so have had very little practise with.  When the bird took off, its size and back colouration confirmed my initial reaction; it just appeared small since I don't get to see Kestrels sitting on the ground very often.  As if to confirm how much I still have to learn, I also convinced myself this dragonfly was a scarce Moustached Darter since I couldn't see the typical thorax stripes of the much commoner Common Darter yet that is what it turned out to be.