Big-nosed bruisers

A few weeks ago, I noticed the peanuts hanging on my balcony were disappearing at a much faster rate than usual and it didn't take long to figure out why.

I'm sure I don't need to tell any of you this is NOT a Ring-necked Parakeet, but its larger cousin, the Alexandrine Parakeet, which also has a well-established breeding population in Brussels and a few other European cities such as Cologne.  The big give-aways are the obvious red shoulder patch and the huge, stonking bill, as well as a noticably longer tail.  It seems they followed the Ring-necked Parakeets from their comunal roost and, now they've worked out there is good stuff to be had on my balcony, word is getting around.  I regularly have eight or more sitting around in the trees waiting and, yesterday, four of them were somehow clinging simultaneously to my bag of peanuts!

The Belgian Alps?

Twitching rarities often takes you to some strange places but yesterday has got to be the most bizarre twitch I have ever done!  On 22nd January, an Alpine Accentor, only the 10th for Belgium, was unexpectedly discovered within the walls of Bouillon castle by a group doing a bat survey.  It is still there so I finally made the three-hour long journey by train and bus to Bouillon and paid my entrance fee to the castle, where I had to walk through underground tunnels, past dungeons and a torture chamber (!) to reach the inner courtyard where the bird is often seen.  There was no sign of it of course, so I continued on along winding stairways, peering out of turret windows, to the highest point of the castle.  There were two other birders present but, after half an hour, none of us had seen anything so I headed back down into the courtyard, where I suddenly heard an unfamiliar song.  I looked up and there it was, blending in perfectly with the rock wall.

It was constantly in subsong, even when it was feeding, and, at one point, came to within a couple of metres of us to feed on some breadcrumbs.  What a gorgeous little bird and a joy to watch, having only seen them a few times before in the Alps, at elevations of 2000m or more. 
We're only a few weeks into 2023 but Belgium may already have its bird of the year.

Wild goose chase

Last weekend was my annual, winter wild goose chase around Zeeland and we'd picked a beautiful day for it.  We started with 3 Lesser White-fronted Geese, which unfortunately flew off before we could get the scopes on them, but then marvelled at the sight and sound of well over 3000 Barnacle Geese.  The day ended with yet more Barnacles, but this time accompanied by around 350 Brent Geese which came in off the sea to drink.  We also paid a visit to the Brouwersdam, where the sea was like a mirror and the unusually calm weather made for fantastic viewing conditions, allowing us to connect with displaying Red-breasted Mergansers, Eiders and Goldeneyes, lots of Common Scoter, Slavonian and Black-necked Grebes, Great Northern and Red-throated Divers, plus four Long-tailed Ducks.  A Green Sandpiper and a few Spoonbill helped make it feel more like the middle of spring than the end of January, and we finished the day with 70 species on our list.

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!