Bulgarian birding

I've not been out of Belgium since my last post but a couple of species I've seen over the past week would make you think I was in Bulgaria instead! 
Just three days after finding my Hume's Warbler in Zeebrugge, I was back there again for this Paddyfield Warbler.  First found within the port, where there is very little cover, it was ever so obliging, even perching on birders' cars.  By the time I got there the following day, it had moved into the dunes and taken to the thick cover of the marram grass so that I was happy to get a couple of good looks at it during the hour or so I was there.  The bushes were literally dripping with Goldcrests and I also saw my first Fieldfare of the autumn, in addition to my lifer Paddyfield, which became my 450th species in Europe!  Then, against all expectation, our Pygmy Cormorant was again seen at the place it spent last winter and was last observed on 10 June.  It is now sporting a beautiful, speckled plumage, very different to the juvenile plumage of last winter.  It looks like it has settled in for its second winter in Brussels, and the Paddyfield Warbler is still skulking around the dunes of Zeebrugge, so there's a little taste of Bulgaria (minus the Red-breasted Geese of course) in Belgium at the moment.

Red October

I had a rather red day at the coast earlier this week with Robins all over the place and quite a few Redwings.  This Red Admiral posed nicely and I also got a picture of a pair of Common Darters (below), one of several, confusingly similar, red-bodied Sympetrum species on the wing at the moment.  The main bird target was Yellow-browed Warbler, however, which is pretty much guaranteed at one particular migrant trap in Zeebrugge at this time of year and, sure enough, I eventually heard one calling.  Whilst I was trying to locate that, though, I suddenly heard a very diferent call I didn't recognise and went to investigate, expecting to perhaps find a Tawny Pipit or something similar.  To my surprise, I instead found a small warbler busy feeding and calling but, despite getting good looks at it, I was still unsure what I had seen.  Back home, I first checked the field guide and decided the features I'd noticed, mainly the grey-green back and long, thin supercilium stretching well past the eye best fit Hume's Warbler.  I then looked on xeno-canto and, sure enough, discovered an exact match for what I'd heard.  Unfortunately, just as I got out my phone to record it, the Hume's Warbler lifted up out of the bush in which it was feeding and flew off over the harbour so it will remain an undocumented, one-person observation.  Still, I'm 100% sure that's what it was, even if it is rather early for this species and it would be the first of the autumn for the Benelux and only the 6th or 7th of the autumn for the entire Western Palearctic!  This is a mega rarity, with only 13 accepted records in Belgium, and by far the rarest bird I have found myself since I've been living here.

Metropolitan migration

Well, I last wrote that there had been an increase in the number of migrating Song Thrushes and, two days ago, the migration counters in The Hague logged a staggering 14,657 of them going past!  I spotted a small group of Redwings, my first of the winter, going over on my way to the supermarket and also heard a migrating Brambling, another first of the season.  Yesterday morning, therefore, I decided to see if the thrush throngs were also passing over the centre of Brussels and spent an hour and a half counting the migration on my balcony, tallying 184 birds of at least 15 species.  Just as I started, I noticed two Great Egrets disappearing in the distance, no doubt following the canal, but the best bird of the morning was a single Woodlark which passed directly overhead, calling twice as it went.  I saw small numbers of both Song Thrush and Redwing but the majority were Chaffinches and distant things I just couldnt identify, including a very dark-looking bunting which may well have been Little, plus two possible Ring Ouzels.  Both Great Egret and Woodlark were new for my balcony list and, this morning, during another count with roughly the same amount of birds, I also added Lapwing, as a flock of 18 passed high overhead.  That makes 59 species seen from my balcony in the three years I've been in this apartment, and almost 400 individuals of at least 20 species going past in a total of just three hours this weekend.  That you can see so much migration in the built-up area of Brussels, whereas a lot of species often skirt around major cities, is amazing and just gives an idea of the amount of birds passing over at this time of the year.  Look up!

The end of summer?

This Indian summer we are having just doesn't want to end but, temperatures aside, things are starting to look very autumnal.  I've been trying a migration watch from my balcony most mornings with varying success.  There have been good numbers of Chaffinches going over, with quite a few Siskins, Skylarks and Meadow Pipits, plus an obvious increase in Song Thrushes the past few days.  The best migrant so far was a Barn Swallow, which flew right past on 5th October and will most likely be my last swallow of the year.  My local park, is starting to get the odd Chiffchaff, Firecrest and Goldcrest feeding with the resident group of Long-tailed Tits, and several Robins have arrived and are singing to proclaim their winter territories.  On Monday morning, I guided a visiting birder around my Brussels patch, with Middle Spotted Woodpecker again showing ridiculously well although it took several visits to the spot before it finally appeared.  We managed to find 47 species in just a few hours, including the regular Red-crested Pochards and Ferruginous Duck, with a Kingfisher in the mist making for a very atmospheric start.  My guest was also interested in fungi and these seem to be at their peak right now as we saw several interesting species, including some very fresh Fly Agaric mushrooms, which I don't remember noticing before.

Going blonde

I made a quick visit over the border into the Dutch region of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen this week and, as with my previous trip to the Netherlands, there were a lot of birds around, including geese, ducks, Spoonbills and even a hybrid Chilean x Greater Flamingo.  The target of the twitch, however, was my lifer Buff-breasted Sandpiper, and the group of Ringed Plovers it was hanging out with conveniently flew in and landed fairly close by as soon as I arrived.  The Dutch name for it translates as blond cavalier, and this juvenile certainly had a lovely, yellowish tinge to its plumage.  At one point, I had the Buff-breasted, a Pectoral Sandpiper and a Little Stint in the field of view of my telescope all at once!  Pectorals do nest in eastern Siberia but, as far as I know, Buff-breasted only breeds in North America, so it's anybody's guess just where the group of Ringed Plovers accompanying these two rarities have come from.  I did manage this distant record-shot of the Pectoral Sandpiper but my attempts at the Buff-breasted were even fuzzier so, instead, here are some great pictures taken by somebody with a much bigger camera.

Wot, no birds?

Earlier this week, I did my annual hike across the rolling hills of the Reuland Plateau in Belgian Luxembourg in the hope of seeing Nutcracker.  It was a bit early for them, however, and I didn't get to see any although I did hear what was possibly one calling way off in the distance.  The only migration I saw was a single Marsh Harrier and a group of six Barn Swallows right at the end of the day, and there were very few passerine migrants around too.  The only birds of note were the ones I typically have to go to this part of Belgium for; Tree Sparrow, Red Kite, Eurasian Treecreeper, Common Crossbill and a heard-only Raven.  Thankfully, though, there were still a few butterflies around to liven up the 20km walk.  Some Pale Clouded Yellows took me a while to identify as they just wouldn't sit still, in stark contrast to this Peacock, which is always a pleasure to see, even when part of its wing is missing.

Zeeland zillions

I had a nice day with my Dutch birding friends in Zeeland at the weekend.  We started with a twitch to some terribly distant Dotterel which were just brown birds in flight but then moved to the harbour of Stellendam, where the mudflats were teeming with zillions of birds.  Oystercatcher and Curlew were probably the most numerous waders, with several hundred of each, but we also counted at least 150 Spoonbill and 250 Sandwich Terns.  A small group of Sanderling contained one bird still in summer plumage, as were a big group of Grey Plovers, and I managed to pick out one Bar-tailed Godwit from the masses of other birds present.  The best birds, though, were an unusually confiding Rock Pipit and a pair of Caspian Terns, one adult and one juvenile, which appeared out of nowhere and sat on the nearest sandbank for us to admire.  By the end of the day, we had tallied 63 species.
Yesterday, I made my first visit to my regular Brussels patch since May.  There were much fewer species around of course but our female Ferruginous Duck is back again, having disappeared to parts unknown since early June and there was one Red-crested Pochard in eclipse plumage.  There was also a colour-ringed Great Egret, which I presumed was the one which turns up there regularly but, having sent the details to the ringer, it turns out its a 1st-year Dutch bird ringed in the nest in South Holland, around 115km north of Brussels, just three months ago!