Rutland ice rink

I was back in the UK last weekend and had a beautiful but frosty day around Rutland Water.  The lagoons had all frozen over and it was funny to see groups of Redwing slipping and sliding around on the ice as they searched for food amongst the emergent reeds.  A Long-tailed Tit also dropped down onto the ice to collect some fallen bullrush seeds and a fox was trotting around the lagoons, flushing two Snipe, which would otherwise have remained hidden.  The waterbirds were all concentrated on the main reservoir and one bay in particular held a very tightly packed group of Coot, Gadwall, Tufted Duck and a few Goldeneye.

Since the water here was too deep for the Gadwalls to feed, they would wait for a Coot to come up from a dive with a beakful of weed and then snatch it off them!  I almost walked straight past this male Bullfinch quietly munching on some old brambles.

The last hide I visited had lots of Teal feeding at point-blank range plus two Red-crested Pochard, which are, or at least used to be, rare in the UK.

Fresh fudge

It's been a very wet and windy start to the year so the only birding I have done outside of Brussels so far was a return visit to the winter warbler wonderland of Ghent, where I again got to see both Hume's and Pallas's Warblers as well as hearing a Yellow-browed Warbler near the station.  My first birding of the year was giving a guided tour around my Brussels patch, which provided 42 species, starting with a Water Rail out in the open with a fish in its beak, and ending on a perched Kingfisher.  During a walk in the forest, I got to watch a lovely group of Chaffinches and Brambling bathing in a puddle but, of course, I didn't have my camera with me.  My local park has had Goldcrest, Firecrest and Blackcap, and I made a detour to see this 'new' Ferruginous Duck on the canal, where she swam so close I even managed to get this crappy record shot with my phone.  Since our long-staying bird died, this young female is the only one to be seen regularly in Brussels although she only occasionally turns up on the canal where she can usually be found hanging out with the Pochards and Tufted Ducks.

2022 review

2022 was a bit of a rollercoaster for me, as you can read from my annual review of my monthly birding highlights of the past year (lifers in CAPS).

January - Golden Plover (Uitkerkse Polders and Zeeland, NL); I was pleased to see around 400 in the polders but this was blown out of the water by the 3000-4000 at Plan Tureluur.

February - Middle Spotted Woodpecker (Brussels); a pair seen excavating a potential nesthole on my Brussels patch.

March - Wigeon (Reeuwijksche Plassen, NL and Uitkerkse Polders); an excited, pre-migration gathering of perhaps as many as 20,000-30,000 making for an incredible sight and sound.

April - BLACK-BROWED ALBATROSS (Bempton Cliffs, GB); an international twitch to the returning individual gave me my first albatross anywhere in the world.

May - Arctic Tern (Ostend); 5 seen well on migration and in direct comparison with Common Terns.

June - White Stork (Brussels); 1 passing high over my balcony was pretty much the only bird I saw during six weeks of being bedridden with two sprained ankles.

July - Cirl Bunting (Namur province); my first post-injury birding was a twitch to a male which had set up territory near Dinant, and my first in Belgium.

August - Pied Flycatcher (Brussels); one spotted from my balcony was an unexpected highlight of being stuck at home in COVID-19 quarantine.

September - Hoopoe (Brussels); it took me two attempts to find the bird which spent five days on my Brussels patch.

October - WHITE-NECKED ROCKFOWL (Ghana); the undoubted highlight of my birding tour of Ghana.

November - Common Crane (Cologne, DE); a large group first heard and then seen passing over my hotel during a non-birding, city break. 

December - Hume's Warbler (Eilat, IL and Ghent); an unprecented two seen this month, both in city parks.

Blue-spotted Arab, Eilat

I finished the year having seen or heard just 178 species in Belgium, 206 in Europe, plus another 48 in Israel.  Three of these were lifers - Blyth's Reed Warbler near Gouda, NL in March, the Black-browed Albatross, and October's Booted Warbler in Zeebrugge.  My Ghanaian trip provided another 190 lifers and took my total year list to 571 species.  Getting to see the legendary picathartes was amazing but the bird of the year title has to go to the Black-browed Albatross at Bempton since it is a family I have long wanted to see and we almost missed it as it only showed for a couple of hours on our first morning. 

My Belgian list increased by five (Ring-billed Gull, Cirl Bunting, Long-tailed Skua, Booted Warbler and Pallas' Warbler) to a nice, round 330 species, I added three species (Pied Flycatcher, Hoopoe and migrating Woodlark) to my Brussels patch list, which now stands at 116 species for the reserve, and my apartment/balcony list increased by just two (White Stork and heard-only Willow Warbler) to 75 species.

Being out of action for a large chunk of spring meant that I did very little butterflying and dragonflying this year. 

May 2023 bring us all lots more birds, butterflies and dragonflies.