Early days

I tried doing a migration count at the coast on Friday but, apart from being very early in the season, it was extremely windy, resulting in a count of just 132 migrating individuals of 20 different species over the course of two hours.  The best were a single Spoonbill and two Marsh Harriers, with only a dozen or so each of Meadow Pipit and White Wagtail.  I thus gave up and did a tour of the polders, seeing my first Avocets, Black-tailed Godwits and Ringed Plovers of the year, as well as some lingering Wigeon and around 40 Barnacle Geese.  Today, I twitched this beautiful, male Pintail, a rare bird in Brussels, in Anderlecht, where I got an added bonus in the shape of my first Black Redstart of the spring.

March-ing on

There has been very little sign of our summer visitors in Brussels so far this month.   The bulk of the Chiffchaffs now seem to have arrived and, this morning, I heard and saw the first Blackcap singing in my local park.  Apart from that, though, the past few weeks have been very quiet, with just a couple of twitches to write about.  The first was a local one within Brussels to this subadult Caspian Gull along the canal.

The second, earlier this week was a quick trip to the coast for the Oriental Turtle Dove, which was discovered last weekend.  It was too distant for photo's but I got to see it well through the telescope.  This is only my second OTD, and my first in Belgium, the first one being a long-staying individual in The Netherlands I only saw very briefly some six years ago.  Having watched it preening for about ten minutes, it didn't look like it was going to be doing much else, so I explored the nearby nature reserve.  It too was quiet but, around 5pm, I witnessed a big exodus of around 1000 White-fronted Geese, with formation after formation passing over on what I presume was the first leg of their northward migration.

Master builders

A pair of Magpies have chosen a tree opposite my balcony in which to make their new nest and are making amazing progress.  This picture of a small jumble of twigs was taken last weekend, when I first noticed they kept returning to the same spot.  Just one week later, their new home now looks like this!

Interestingly, two of their old nests were visible from my apartment but, rather than re-using the same nest, they chose to recycle the sticks in order to make a new one.  One of the two has completely disappeared, partly thanks to the local Monk Parakeets, who also seem to have helped themselves to the easily accessible concentration of building material.  The first singing Chiffchaffs had arrived in Brussels by 28 February and, yesterday, during a long hike in the Hautes Fagnes, I finally added one last winter visitor, Great Grey Shrike, to my year list before the onslaught of all the other summer migrants begins.

Bye bye winter

Within one week of me standing in the snow watching Woodcocks, our daytime temperatures had increased by a ridiculous twenty degrees. 
The cranes reacted immediately, with plenty of northbound migration as a result.  I thus did the long hike in the Ardennes I usually do each autumn, seeing around 900 cranes in total, plus several Red Kites.

Other new birds for the year included Lesser Redpoll, Bullfinch, lots of Crossbills, and a pair of Dippers I managed to find along the River Salm during my 20-minute wait at Trois-Ponts train station.

Before our winter visitors all disappear, I decided to try and add Bewick's Swan to my year list yesterday evening by visiting their roost on the Kalmthoutse Heide after work.  It was a beautiful evening as you can see below but the swans didn't arrive until 19:17, by which time it was almost dark and I was already on my way back.  They flew right over me calling, however, so I at least heard them, taking my list to 130 species by the end of February.

The deep freeze part 2

The subzero temperatures finally abated last weekend and it is now feeling like spring!  On Saturday, though, I headed to the coast in the hope of seeing some of the huge influx of Woodcocks the heavy snowfall had brought.  At first, I only got the typical views of birds flying away from me but, with a lot of patience and a bit of luck, I finally got to watch three of them feeding on the ground.  It has probably been around thirty years since I last saw a Woodcock feeding, as opposed to displaying or being flushed.  They were hopelessly ensconced amongst a jumble of branches so I fired off a couple of pictures without really expecting to get anything recognisable but am very pleased with the result.  In the second picture below you can even make out a second one between the tree-trunks on the right.  By the time I'd finished my walk, I had had at least a dozen Woodcock sightings involving eight or more individuals in a relatively small area.  A few other year ticks such as Goosander, Rock Pipit and both Knot and Grey Plover feeding amongst 130 or so Sanderling took my 2021 list to 120 species so far.

The deep freeze

Belgium got off lightly last weekend with just a couple of centimetres of snow in Brussels, while ten times that amount fell in The Netherlands and large parts of Germany.  Temperatures, though, have plummeted with daytime maxima just below freezing and nights down to minus 13°C!  It was minus 9°C when I wrapped up warm and headed out to my Brussels patch this morning.  One of the first birds I saw was a Kingfisher along the still flowing stream, and most of the ducks plus no less than 11 Little Grebes were concentrated on the small area of open water where it enters one of the ponds, the rest of which have frozen over completely.  

There were lots of Redwings around, many of them feeding on ivy berries whereas this individual had discovered some apple at the feeding station.  A group of at least twenty Siskins were also nice to watch but their acrobatic feeding technique made them ever so difficult to photograph.

Working my way around the main pond, I noticed the areas with plenty of overhanging branches also had a few, small patches of open water, which were crowded with our resident female Ferruginous Duck, a Great Crested Grebe and this American couple getting lovey-dovey ready for Valentine's Day.

After 4 hours I had recorded 49 species but by far the biggest surprise was a medium-sized bat fluttering around at midday and drinking from the open water.  I can only assume it had been disturbed from wherever it was hibernating since it is unlikely to find any food now.

Patchy birding

It has been horribly grey and wet since I last wrote so I've not done much birding and have only added another 6 species to my 2021 year list, which now stands at 112.  A long walk criss-crossing Kalmthout Heath failed to produce the overwintering Great Grey Shrike, which seems to have relocated elsewhere, but did give me my first Water Pipits in Belgium since 2014.  I also visited my old patch of Mechels Broek, on the outskirts of Mechelen, for a winter-plumaged Red-necked Grebe.  This is the closest site to Brussels with a good range of habitats and, consequently, a nice variety of species, but I've not been there very often the past few years, as some bad management and lots of disturbance seem to have reduced its attraction to birds.  There were lots around, though, as you can see, with good numbers of Wigeon, Teal, Lapwing, Barnacle Goose and White-fronted Goose, an irregular species this far inland.  Finally, an unsucessful twitch to the male Baikal Teal in the Dijle valley did provide my first Willow Tits of the year. Willow Tit seems to be extinct in Brussels so the area south of Leuven is probably our closest reliable spot for them.