King of the cloister

Health issues have prevented me from doing anything other than birding from my balcony since I went to Texel so I thought I'd write a short post introducing my Brussels patch. 
Roodklooster/Rouge-Cloître is a former abbey with several lakes and ponds bordering the Sonian Forest on the south-eastern edge of Brussels.  As a result, it has a nice mixture of water and woodland birds with my regular visits there usually providing around 40 species, depending on the time of year.  My day record currently stands at 56 species seen/heard on 29 October 2022.  I am also the observer with the most bird species recorded within the reserve as shown on bru.waarnemingen, the local equivalent of eBird.  This list, however, excludes exotics plus a flew species I have recorded from within the reserve but which were just outside the boundaries, so my actual list totals 118 species, the latest addition being European Stonechat from last October.  I first visited it in May 1999, getting to see a pair of displaying Black Woodpeckers chasing each other around a tree-trunk in the nearby forest, something that I've never been lucky enough to see again in the 26 years I've been going there!  Most years, I start the year with a resolution to visit once a month, but other things get in the way and it ends up being considerably less, focussing especially on the spring and autumn migration periods.  Nevertheless, it is usually the first place I go at the start of each year to get my year list off to a decent start, with this year's January visit getting me 39 species, including a drumming Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and a Cetti's Warbler, which is a recent arrival and still extremely rare in Brussels.  Finally, it is on one of the main approach routes to Brussels airport, so there is a good chance you'll see it from the air if you are flying into Brussels.

Bird of the century?

The very next day after me prematurely proclaiming the Moussier's Redstart, which, by the way, is still there, to be my potential bird of the year, all hell broke lose.  Proclaimed to be the rarest bird ever to be found in The Netherlands and the biggest rarity of the millennium, the subadult male Spectacled Eider discovered amongst Common Eiders on the eastern side of Texel was not on anyone's radar and everybody's initial reaction was that it had to be a hoax or an escaped bird.  There are just a handful of winter records way up inside the Arctic Circle, along the northern coast of Norway and off of Svalbard, and only a couple along the Pacific coast of America.  In fact, it's wintering grounds were completely unknown until the entire population was discovered amongst holes in the pack ice of the northern Bering Sea in the mid-nineties.  Frustratingly, the Texel bird was discovered the day before I flew to Malta, so a tense few days ensued wondering whether it would stay and whether or not I might have to cut short my winter break in the sun.  It seemed to be settled, however, and faithful to a short stretch of coast with rich feeding grounds, where it was very successful in catching mussels, starfish and crabs.  I finally got to see it on day 25 of its legendary (and ongoing) stay, joining the crowds of birders from all over Europe who have made a trip to Texel for this special bird you would normally have to go all the way to Alaska to see.

2024 review bis

2024 was not just about the birds since I finally added two long-wanted butterfly species to my Belgian list, namely Poplar Admiral and Cranberry Fritillary.  That takes my Belgian butterfly list to 84 of the 90 or so regularly-occurring species, 82 of which I have photographed.  A trip to Berlin also got me the extinct-in-Belgium Large Chequered Skipper, and my first visit to Corsica got me another 5 new species; Bath White, Cardinal, the endemics Corsican Wall Brown and Corsican Small Heath, plus a brief glimpse of a Nettle-tree Butterfly.  My 9th new butterfly species of the year were some skippers I photographed in Bourg-St-Maurice in September which have been identified as Oberthür's Grizzled Skipper, one of the species I still need to find in Belgium, where it is extremely rare and localised.

My expedition to the Hautes Fagnes for Cranberry Fritillary also got me my first Spearhead Bluet/Northern Damselfly, taking me to 40 species of odonata in Belgium, and I added Southern Skimmer, a species I'd only seen in Israel before, to my European list.

2024 review

It's a month late thanks mainly to the unexpected Moussier's Redstart, which kicked off my 2025 list in style, but here is my review of 2024, starting with the monthly bird highlights (lifers in CAPS).

January - Bittern (West Flanders); a visiting birder wanted to see Bittern so I took him to the best place I know, hoping we might get to see one.  Our first view was of a distant bird sitting in a waterlogged field but, later on, it or another appeared right in front of the hide and started blowing bubbles in the water to attract fish.  Crazy, prolonged views of this unusual behaviour ensued so my visitor was thrilled.

February - Black Woodpecker (Brussels); Black Woodpecker is always difficult to see in Brussels so I was happy to locate a female by her calls.  She was perched on a treetrunk and, while I was watching her, a Green Woodpecker, climbed up the same tree and stopped just below her!

March - Common Crane (Brussels); with prolonged easterlies pushing Cranes over Brussels and after several near misses, I finally managed to spot a migrating group of around 70 from my balcony.

April - HERMIT WARBLER (Eugene, OR); the main target of my US trip, I finally saw one amongst a crazy fall of 100+ warblers on my last morning in Oregon before flying home.

May - Savi's Warbler (Uitkerkse Polders); one seen singing while guiding was the first I have seen in Belgium, having only heard it before.

June - CORSICAN NUTHATCH (Corsica); a morning with a local birdguide was successful in finding all three of my target species during a short, last-minute getaway.

July - Raven (Namur and Antwerp); a noisy family at close range during a butterfly trip in Namur, with another 1 or 2 heard over Kalmthout Heath, where it is considerably rarer.

August - Hen Harrier (Brussels); autumn migration got underway early with a 2nd-year male passing over my balcony together with a female Marsh Harrier.

September - Siberian Stonechat (Ostend); a twitch to the immature showing extremely well at the coast and my first in Belgium.

October - Rose-coloured Starling (Texel); another twitch to the nice, pink adult which spent several months in a Den Burg garden.

November - Tawny Owl (Brussels); one heard twice from my living room was very unexpected since they have never been recorded in my neighbouring park (and I have listened for them many times).  Presumably a young bird dispersing from the nearby forest, it was not heard again.

December - Red-necked Grebe (Amsterdam); always nice to see, this overwintering bird was easy to find in the suburbs of Amsterdam.

I thus ended the year with a total of 409 species, 221 of which were in Europe and 163 in Belgium.

I got 12 lifers during the year (9 in the US and 3 in Corsica), with Ross's Goose and Siberian Stonechat being my only Belgian ticks.  The Ross's Geese were not only new for me but for all Belgian birders, being the first proven-wild birds accepted to the Belgian list.  My balcony list increased by three species (Common Crane, Hen Harrier and the heard-only Tawny Owl) to 80 species, which is pretty impressive for the centre of Brussels. 
Whilst the Hermit Warbler and Corsican Nuthatch were the main targets of their respective trips, I think my bird of the year has to be the adult Rose-coloured Starling I went all the way to Texel to twitch since I had only ever seen a drab juvenile some 26 years previously!

Il-merill

I had a nice, winter break on Gozo, where we got to witness an impressive storm which brought huge waves and at least 30 Yelkouan Shearwaters within sight of my clifftop vantage point.  Thankfully, the storm only lasted one day and the rest of the week was perfect weather for walking around the island and familiarising myself with its birds, most notably Spectacled Warbler, which was singing everywhere.  The first few days only provided fleeting glimpses of Blue Rock Thrushes, the national bird of Malta, but there were lots of them at Ta Cenc cliffs, including several, powdery-blue males, although I only managed to photograph one female.

By far the most scenic walk we did was from Sannap Cliffs (below) down to Xlendi and, whilst this was more of a break in the sun than a birding trip, a pair of Goldcrests, a scarce winter visitor to the islands, became the final and 25th species of my short week away.

Bird of the year?

My first post of the new year was supposed to be my traditional annual review, including the nomination of my 2024 bird of the year.  That idea, and pretty much everything else, got dropped, however, when I learned of France's 2nd-ever Moussier's Redstart within half an hour's walk of a train station near Montpellier.  Moussier's Redstart is one of my most-wanted birds in the world, there are direct (and relatively cheap) TGVs from Brussels to Montpellier, plus any excuse to get away from the wintry gloom of Brussels was good enough for me to book a spontaneous, 2-day trip to the Med!
Having left Brussels at 08:15, I was at the location just seven hours later, although it then took myself and a local lady at least half an hour to finally spot the bird, feeding actively but ever so discretely on the far side of a fenced-off field.  I got to watch it for around 45-minutes and even managed to get a few, distant record shots to prove I'd seen it.

It was far away, though, and the light was fading fast so I called it a day.  Rather than travelling so far there and back on consecutive days and in order to give myself a full day to find the bird just in case it didn't show the first afternoon, I'd booked two nights in Montpellier and resolved to return the following morning in the hope of getting some better pictures.  Immediately upon my arrival, I located him (a first-winter male) again but this time he was feeding along the road, repeatedly perching so close to me that I had to step back in order to focus.

After just 20 minutes, I'd pretty much filled my boots and taken all the photographs I wanted so I moved on and spent the rest of the day at a nature reserve on the outskirts of Montpellier.  This had lots of flamingos (which I'd already spotted from the train on my way to the redstart) plus a small, family group of overwintering Whiskered Terns but not much else.  The Moussier's Redstart, however, was well worth the visit and may well end up being my best bird of 2025.