2023 review

Another year has passed by, so it's time for another review of my best birds of the past twelve months (lifers in CAPS).

January - Brambling (Brussels); in a good winter for them, I first saw one amongst Chaffinches on my Brussels patch, then well over 100 of them in the Sonian Forest.

February - Alpine Accentor (Luxembourg Province); a bizarre, medieval twitch to the individual overwintering within the walls of Bouillon castle.

March - Western Bonelli's Warbler (Forêt de Fontainebleau, France); a single, early individual located by its occasional bursts of song.

April - Booted Eagle (Mechels Broek, Antwerpen); my first in Belgium spotted circling with Buzzards during a guided tour.

May - Black-winged Stilt (West Flanders); a huge invasion this spring resulted in several breeding pairs, with 31 seen in a small, flooded field near Bruges.

June - ROCK PARTRIDGE (Savoie, France); the first of two butterflying to the trips to Modane in the French Alps finally got me this elusive species thanks to local guide Olivier Trompette.

July - Honey Buzzard (Brussels, Antwerp and Luxembourg); in what must have been a good year for them, I saw three different birds this month, starting with one over the Sonian Forest.

August - Short-toed Eagle (Liège Province); another guiding trip, another eagle, this time an immature migrating along the valley near Trois-Points and only my second in Belgium.

September - Common Crane (Otmoor, UK); a trip to England included a visit to RSPB Otmoor, where I saw an immature Crane, part of the recently re-established breeding population.

October - YELLOW-BROWED BUNTING (Vlieland, NL); a mammoth journey was required to see this 1st-year bird on the last day of its stay!

November - ANDEAN COCK-OF-THE-ROCK (Ecuador); just one of the many highlights of a ten-day birding tour of the Andes.

December - Redwing (Brussels) - present almost daily in the park neighbouring my apartment and even heard singing, which is rare away from their breeding grounds.

During the year, I saw or heard 179 species in Belgium (just 1 more than last year!), with trips to the UK, The Netherlands, France and Berlin taking my European year-list to 229.  Three of these were lifers, namely Rock Partridge, Radde's Warbler and Yellow-browed Bunting, and I added three new species to my Belgian list; Alpine Accentor, Booted Eagle and Radde's Warbler.

I flew to Ecuador the long way round, adding a stopover in Atlanta, where Brown-headed Nuthatch was the only new addition to my life-list, before the flood of new species in Ecuador.  Of the 349 encountered there, 223 (almost two-thirds) were new for me, pushing my life-list to 2789 species, which means I have now seen more than 1/4 of all the birds in the world!

2023 thus ended on 618 species seen/heard in the world, the best of which was of course my most-wanted one, the Cock-of-the-Rock. 
May I wish you all a happy and birdy 2024.

Andean advent Day 24

And finally, my most wanted bird in the world and the main reason for this trip; Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, which we got to see displaying on their lek.

Andean advent Day 23

Andean Condors.  We saw around 15 of them, which is roughly 10% of the Ecuadorian population

Andean advent Day 22

Giant Hummingbird

Andean advent Day 21

Andean Lapwing

Andean advent Day 20

This raging torrent was home to a family of Torrent Ducks

Andean advent Day 19

Tourmaline Sunangel

Andean advent Day 18

There weren't many species to be seen at 4200m altitude but Chestnut-winged Cinclodes was common at this elevation.

Andean advent Day 17

Of all the birds featured, this is the only one I'd seen before, but never in this snazzy, intermediate plumage of an immature male White-lined Tanager.

Andean advent Day 16

Collared Inca

Andean advent Day 15

Blue-winged Mountain-Tanager

Andean advent Day 14

Two shy, forest species which came to the ground feeder at Amagusa; White-throated Quail-Dove and Dark-backed Wood-Quail.

Andean advent Day 13

Long-tailed Sylph

Andean advent Day 12

Rose-faced Parrots at Amagusa

Andean advent Day 11

Stygian Owl in Mindo

Andean advent Day 10

The appropriately-named Velvet-purple Coronet

Andean advent Day 9

The habituated antpittas at the wonderful Refugio Paz de las Aves have affectionately been given names.  We saw four species here (as well as a bonus Rufous-breasted Antthrush), starting with Willy, the Yellow-breasted Antpitta.

Andean advent Day 8

Flame-faced Tanager in the pouring rain.

Andean advent Day 7

The diminutive White-booted Racket-tail

Andean advent Day 6

Masked Flowerpiercer at Yanacocha

Andean advent Day 5

Yanacocha is also the place we saw our first antpitta of the trip when a family of three Equatorial Antpittas came in, one of them right at my feet!

Andean advent Day 4

As you can guess from their entrance sign, the Yanacocha reserve is famous for its Sword-billed Hummingbirds.

Andean advent Day 3

Crimson-mantled Woodpecker, first seen at Yanacocha, but here taken at Hacienda Jimenita

Andean advent Day 2

Puembo Birding Garden is the only place we could see Croaking Ground Dove, since the isolated population here is far removed from its main range in the Pacific lowlands.  Ebird rather tragically, yet surprisingly accurately, likens its call to a wet fart!

Andean advent Day 1

I've just got back from a 10-day birding tour of Ecuador, visiting both slopes of the Andes. My traditional online advent calendar will thus feature some Andean birds this year, starting with my first lifer of the trip; Sparkling Violetear, at the lovely Puembo Birding Garden.

More of Vlieland

As soon as I stepped outside of my hotel, it was obvious there had been a big fall of thrushes, with Blackbirds and Redwings everywhere, plus groups of Redwings and Fieldfare passing overhead.  We also heard several Waxwing calls and it didn't take long until a group of 4 were located feeding in an apple tree, rapidly attracting a small crowd of admirers.

I then moved towards the harbour, having received some tips from a local nature photographer on where to find the Shag which had taken up winter residence there.

I was fairly pleased with my photo, until I bumped into the photographer again, who showed me his!

Shag by Gerard Koster Joenje

I also got to see the Little Bunting which had been frequenting the bushes near the harbour, found a late but extremely photogenic Wheatear, and did a short walk through the forest, passing a football pitch which was covered in Redwings, before returning to the bunting on my way back to the ferry, having enjoyed a lovely, late autumn day's birding on Vlieland.  

Yellow-browed buses

Birds are often likened to buses, since you can go for years without seeing something or without a particular species turning up somewhere, until suddenly two or more come along in quick succession.  A week yesterday, the first Brussels Yellow-browed Warbler since 2020 was found at a small nature reserve in the north of the city.  I was there the following afternoon and heard it call it after only half an hour of searching, but it then took me another 45 frustrating minutes to finally see it.  When it did reveal itself, I got excellent views, but it was too quick and far to get any pictures.

The same winds that had brought the Yellow-browed Warbler to Brussels, had also deposited a mega-rare Yellow-browed Bunting on the Dutch island of Vlieland, and half of birding Holland had seen and photographed it by the end of the weekend.  Now, Monday and Tuesday were my days off, I have never seen a YbB and I had never been to Vlieland, so off I went!  I had worked out I could just make it to the island with an hour or so of daylight left if I left home at 6am, but a broken catenary put paid to that plan and it ended up taking me 15 hours to get there, having been evacuated from my stranded train after three hours and then missing my ferry as result.  The unbearable four-hour wait in Harlingen for the next ferry was made a little better by a group of Knot and big flock of Wigeon, as well as the wonderful sight of a Little Grebe feeding under the tail of the harbour's whale sculpture, but I finally arrived on the island in the dark, exhausted and rather dejected, wondering if I'd come all that way for nothing.  The bird had been showing well all day, however, and, miracle of miracles, it was raining by the time I got there, meaning the bunting was unlikely to move on overnight.  I was up before first light and headed towards the area but, with no-one else around so early, I ended up walking much too far, until I spotted another birder, who kindly took me back to the spot and there it was, feeding at the roadside!  I first made sure I got to see it well then, just as I got my camera out, a van came past and flushed it into the bushes and out of sight. It appeared again, rather briefly, but then seemed to disappear, so I headed back to my hotel for some breakfast and to check-out, elated I'd actually seen the bird but without any pictures to prove it.  After breakfast, I headed back to the spot, which now had several others waiting, and we stood there for an hour and a half in the pouring rain without any sign of the bird.  Then, as if by magic, the rain stopped, and the bird flew in and started feeding again just before the birders who'd taken the morning ferry arrived, and we all got great looks for a few minutes until it headed off high over the trees.  It looked like that was it, so I went off exploring the island (more of which in the next post) but I returned to the spot in the afternoon before catching the last ferry, and this time it was feeding in the grass verge for at least half an hour so I could finally get some photographs.  It has not been seen since!

Getting Raddical

Earlier this autumn, I suggested myself and a friend in The Netherlands keep each other informed of any Radde's Warblers that turn up in the hope we could finally connect with one.  A scarce, autumn vagrant to Belgium in very small but seemingly increasing numbers (2022: 7 birds, 2021: 1, 2020: 2 and 2019 none), it is, however, probably the most regularly-occurring vagrant neither he nor I have yet seen.  The number of records isn't really the reason but much more their terribly skulking nature.  Any birds that do turn up tend not to stick around for more than one or two days and, when they do, they forage exclusively in thick vegetation, making hearing their call about as much as one can hope for. 
The first of 2023 was a dead bird found in an Antwerp garden on 30 September.  Whilst not much use to the twitchers, it was at least a sign that they were on the move and there could soon be more.  During the afternoon of 5 October, the first live one was found at the Sashul, a traditional migrant trap at the coast, and it showed well until the evening. There was no sign of it on 6th but another bird was seen and photographed by two observers in the same location early on 7th.  I thus headed to the coast and spent two hours looking for it but only one other person got the briefest of glimpses all day long and it was only heard again an hour after I'd left.  Of course, the following morning it showed extremely well and was even seen bathing in some dew-covered flowers but I didn't want to go all the way back to the coast again so soon.  Monday 9 October, the start of my 5-days-in-a-row working week dawned and things got crazy.  The Sashul bird was still there, with another caught and ringed at the Zwin, and a third bird seen well just down the road from the Sashul in Zeebrugge.  On 10 October yet another was found in Ostend, whilst the Zeebrugge bird seemed to have a routine of showing well early in the morning, presumably at its roosting site, before dropping down into the shrubbery and being much more difficult to find.  This continued all week long so on Friday 13, following overnight rain which meant it was unlikely to have moved on, and working a late shift leaving me the morning free, I decided to give it another try.  I got there at 9am and could see the half-dozen birders all lined up and obviously looking/pointing at something so I literally ran the last 100 metres and was greeted by a beautiful Radde's Warbler sitting up in the open (albeit partly obscured by a stick) for a full four minutes!

It then started foraging and I got to see it really well for a total of ten minutes over the next hour, before it became much harder to follow amongst the denser vegetation.

My photo's don't really do it justice but there are plenty of much better ones online since pretty much every birder in Belgium has been to see it, and it is still there today, despite the first frost and cold nights of the autumn, with lots of Redwings on the move.  All this time, there has only been a single, 1-day bird in The Netherlands, out on the island of Schiermonnikoog.

More of Modane (part 3)

So, after two years and two aborted attempts, I finally made it back to the Vallon de l'Orgère at the start of August.  This time the bus was running and a friend from France even joined me for the first day's hike to the Lac de la Partie at 2500m altitude.

Unfortunately, it rained quite a lot while we were up around the lake so we saw no butterflies whatsoever but we did enjoy watching a flock (!) of around a dozen Alpine Accentors, and almost stepped on a White-winged Snowfinch.  The sun was out, however, for our climb up and once we got back down into the valley, so we still managed to see some butterflies, including lots of Damon Blues and my first Marbled, Mnestra's and Common Brassy Ringlets.

On the second day, I concentrated on the valley, adding a few more species and ending on this crazy puddle party at the stream we had walked down the previous day.  A single Common Brassy Ringlet was outnumbered by the many blues - I counted ten different species, including my first Glandon Blue.

By the end of the two days, I'd added 10 new species to my list, with another two photo's of the terribly difficult Pyrgus-skippers still pending identification.