Cross-border butterflying

Last month, I spent a week in Basel.  I did a little birding, seeing Dipper, Black Woodpecker, a male Golden Oriole, and a pair of Ruddy Shelduck with no less than 10 goslings, but my main target was my lifer Reverdin's Blue.  A local had given me some good tips so I walked over the border to a nice little nature reserve just inside Germany.  At first, there didn't seem to be any blues whatsoever but I did manage to find a couple of males, although I wasn't at all sure at the time since they seemed to be lacking the silver-centred black spots typical of this genus.

Mock star

Last weekend, I paid a visit to the rock star, 1st for Germany Northern Mockingbird which has been attracting admirers from far and wide since it was found in early September.  I've seen plenty of these in the US, including earlier this year, and I wouldn't normally twitch an American vagrant just for my WP list but a friend planted the seed in my head and it seemed a nice area for a walk so I decided to give it a try anyway.  The fields were full of Skylarks which kept getting flushed by a hunting, juvenile Hen Harrier and, within 50 minutes of heading out from the nearest train station, I joined a small crowd watching the bird.  It was in its favourite apple tree, seemed to be healthy and there were plenty of apples left to keep it sustained through the winter.  The only fly in the ointment is that the rather unassuming farmland location is very close to the Rhine, meaning it is very likely to have spent at least part of its transatlantic voyage on a ship, which may well damage its chances of being accepted as a true vagrant.  Either way, it was nice to see this side of the Atlantic, especially when it started stretching for the assembled paparazzi.

Lazy bustards

On my way back from Poland earlier this month, I stopped off in Berlin and hired local guide Rolf Nessing to hopefully find me another lifer.  Heading to our meeting point by train, I already noticed one group of cranes in flight and we soon found this group - notice the brown, young bird in the centre - right by the side of the road.  Stopping a little later to check out some geese (mostly Tundra Beans and White-fronts), we suddenly realised there was also a large flock of cranes feeding in a ditch to our right and counted around 600 of them, some of which were displaying.  As great as it was to see and hear them, they were not my target bird so we pressed on towards Buschow train station.  Once there, Rolf pulled up right between the platform and some rather average-looking fields and said we'd look here.  After just a few minutes of scanning, he announced he'd found them and I was looking at my first Great Bustards, 14 of them, just standing there in the middle of the field!  There was another, larger group in the distance, however, so we drove closer to get better views and try to count them.  We settled for 41, with one big male in particular regularly flashing his white feathers in some half-hearted display gestures no doubt prompted by the mild weather, before moving on to an area which held two Hen Harriers, two Rough-legged Buzzards and a Red Kite.  After a good morning's birding, during which we also saw around 70 Whooper Swans and two White-tailed Eagles, we headed back to Buschow for my train back to Berlin.  Just as we were approaching, though, a group of large birds flew over the road and my first reaction was geese before I realised it was actually the bustards, which had been put up by a passing eagle.  They flew right over the car and I managed to get a flight shot of the whole group numbering 57.  We had obviously missed a couple of birds earlier on and this total represents 50% of the remaining German population of this vulnerable and rapidly declining yet beautiful species.