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.