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!
