Rutland ice rink

I was back in the UK last weekend and had a beautiful but frosty day around Rutland Water.  The lagoons had all frozen over and it was funny to see groups of Redwing slipping and sliding around on the ice as they searched for food amongst the emergent reeds.  A Long-tailed Tit also dropped down onto the ice to collect some fallen bullrush seeds and a fox was trotting around the lagoons, flushing two Snipe, which would otherwise have remained hidden.  The waterbirds were all concentrated on the main reservoir and one bay in particular held a very tightly packed group of Coot, Gadwall, Tufted Duck and a few Goldeneye.

Since the water here was too deep for the Gadwalls to feed, they would wait for a Coot to come up from a dive with a beakful of weed and then snatch it off them!  I almost walked straight past this male Bullfinch quietly munching on some old brambles.

The last hide I visited had lots of Teal feeding at point-blank range plus two Red-crested Pochard, which are, or at least used to be, rare in the UK.

Fresh fudge

It's been a very wet and windy start to the year so the only birding I have done outside of Brussels so far was a return visit to the winter warbler wonderland of Ghent, where I again got to see both Hume's and Pallas's Warblers as well as hearing a Yellow-browed Warbler near the station.  My first birding of the year was giving a guided tour around my Brussels patch, which provided 42 species, starting with a Water Rail out in the open with a fish in its beak, and ending on a perched Kingfisher.  During a walk in the forest, I got to watch a lovely group of Chaffinches and Brambling bathing in a puddle but, of course, I didn't have my camera with me.  My local park has had Goldcrest, Firecrest and Blackcap, and I made a detour to see this 'new' Ferruginous Duck on the canal, where she swam so close I even managed to get this crappy record shot with my phone.  Since our long-staying bird died, this young female is the only one to be seen regularly in Brussels although she only occasionally turns up on the canal where she can usually be found hanging out with the Pochards and Tufted Ducks.

2022 review

2022 was a bit of a rollercoaster for me, as you can read from my annual review of my monthly birding highlights of the past year (lifers in CAPS).

January - Golden Plover (Uitkerkse Polders and Zeeland, NL); I was pleased to see around 400 in the polders but this was blown out of the water by the 3000-4000 at Plan Tureluur.

February - Middle Spotted Woodpecker (Brussels); a pair seen excavating a potential nesthole on my Brussels patch.

March - Wigeon (Reeuwijksche Plassen, NL and Uitkerkse Polders); an excited, pre-migration gathering of perhaps as many as 20,000-30,000 making for an incredible sight and sound.

April - BLACK-BROWED ALBATROSS (Bempton Cliffs, GB); an international twitch to the returning individual gave me my first albatross anywhere in the world.

May - Arctic Tern (Ostend); 5 seen well on migration and in direct comparison with Common Terns.

June - White Stork (Brussels); 1 passing high over my balcony was pretty much the only bird I saw during six weeks of being bedridden with two sprained ankles.

July - Cirl Bunting (Namur province); my first post-injury birding was a twitch to a male which had set up territory near Dinant, and my first in Belgium.

August - Pied Flycatcher (Brussels); one spotted from my balcony was an unexpected highlight of being stuck at home in COVID-19 quarantine.

September - Hoopoe (Brussels); it took me two attempts to find the bird which spent five days on my Brussels patch.

October - WHITE-NECKED ROCKFOWL (Ghana); the undoubted highlight of my birding tour of Ghana.

November - Common Crane (Cologne, DE); a large group first heard and then seen passing over my hotel during a non-birding, city break. 

December - Hume's Warbler (Eilat, IL and Ghent); an unprecented two seen this month, both in city parks.

Blue-spotted Arab, Eilat

I finished the year having seen or heard just 178 species in Belgium, 206 in Europe, plus another 48 in Israel.  Three of these were lifers - Blyth's Reed Warbler near Gouda, NL in March, the Black-browed Albatross, and October's Booted Warbler in Zeebrugge.  My Ghanaian trip provided another 190 lifers and took my total year list to 571 species.  Getting to see the legendary picathartes was amazing but the bird of the year title has to go to the Black-browed Albatross at Bempton since it is a family I have long wanted to see and we almost missed it as it only showed for a couple of hours on our first morning. 

My Belgian list increased by five (Ring-billed Gull, Cirl Bunting, Long-tailed Skua, Booted Warbler and Pallas' Warbler) to a nice, round 330 species, I added three species (Pied Flycatcher, Hoopoe and migrating Woodlark) to my Brussels patch list, which now stands at 116 species for the reserve, and my apartment/balcony list increased by just two (White Stork and heard-only Willow Warbler) to 75 species.

Being out of action for a large chunk of spring meant that I did very little butterflying and dragonflying this year. 

May 2023 bring us all lots more birds, butterflies and dragonflies.

Winter warbler wonderland

The rest of my week in Eilat was much less productive, partly since I was exhausted from my long hike through the desert, but also because I spent a lot of time trying in vain to spot the Swinhoe's Storm-Petrels, which had been frequenting the Gulf of Eilat, from shore.  I thus ended the trip with zero lifers and just three new additions to my Israeli list; the Wigeon, a Great Crested Grebe on the sea off North Beach, and my 4th ever Hume's Warbler twitched in a city park.

Earlier this week, I then went and saw another Hume's Warbler in a park in Ghent, where it seems to be overwintering.  Amazingly, though, birders looking for the Hume's Warbler also discovered a Pallas's Warbler, which seems to be overwintering in the same city park.  It took me a long time to see anything, the first bird I found being a very vocal, female Firecrest, but I then heard the distant calls of the Hume's Warbler and managed to locate it.  It was very mobile so I followed it to another section of the park, where a small group of birders were already watching the spritely Pallas's Warbler.  This was only my third observation of this species and my first in Belgium, and it put on a great show, at times hovering so close to me I couldn't even use my binoculars.  As I was enjoying that, a Goldcrest also appeared and, although I know the 'crests are no longer officially considered as warblers, I still think of them as such, thus making it a 4-warbler day in Belgian city park in late December!

Frosted raspberries

For my second day in Eilat, I got a taxi to drop me off at the entrance road to Amram's Pillars, another site I'd never managed to reach before.  Having seen no wheatears whatsoever the previous day, my first birds were Hooded and Mourning Wheatears, with several singing White-crowned Black Wheatears later on.  I took a good couple of hours to reach the campground, where some other birders who were on their way out had told me they'd seen my target species.  Once there, though, all I found was a large group of Trumpeter Finches, so I continued further along the road to the junction with the next hiking trail.  Here, I started to hear faint calls coming from the cliffs and began scanning.  Suddenly, I found a big, fat, frosted raspberry of a male Sinai Rosefinch just sitting there on the cliff-face.  I then noticed some females/immatures hiding in the crevices and eventually had five of them come down and feed.

This was my most wanted bird of the trip since I'd only ever had a brief, distant glimpse of a small group way back in 2009, so I was relieved to finally remove the unwanted bvd-label from this species.  After that, it was time for the long slog back through the desert to the nearest bus-stop, although I did break it up by having a look at the km20 saltpans, where three male Wigeon were a bit of a surprise since I didn't realise they migrate all the way down into Africa.

Eilat again

I flew back to Eilat earlier this month for a week of winter sun and birding which got off to a great start when I finally managed to visit Holland Park, on the outskirts of the city.  Some of the first birds I saw were Arabian Green Bee-Eaters, which are fairly common but always such a joy to behold.

I had intended on just having a quick look around before heading down to the IBRCE reserve but the park was much bigger than I expected and I ended up spending all morning there.  Having already flushed one Sand Partridge, I fully expected the next three birds I flushed to be the same but, thankfully, one of them landed under a bush just a little further along the trail and I couldn't believe my eyes.

My first Liechtenstein's Sandgrouse since 2003 sitting there in the middle of the day!  I admired it for the longest time just blending in with the vegetation and being ever so difficult to locate with my camera, the yellow, black and white eye markings being the only give-away.  I felt guilty walking away from such a rare opportunity and even turned round and walked a different route so as not to disturb it again.  This resulted in me discovering a bush which was full of African Babul Blues, not the prettiest of blues but a real challenge to photograph since they are so tiny.

Having also seen a lone Arabian Babbler, a small flock of Indian Silverbills and another group of five Liechtenstein's Sandgrouse in flight, I eventually made my way to IBRCE, where Bittern, Spotted Eagle, 3 Steppe Eagles, a hunting Black-winged Kite and an Oriental Honey-Buzzard rounded off an excellent first day with a total of 61 species.

African advent Day 24

And finally, by no means the rarest bird of the trip, these nesting Chestnut-and-black Weavers at Hans Cottage did provide my favourite photograph when I noticed a new nest that was essentially just the doorway and waited for its owner to return.  Happy holidays!