Hawfy New Year!

Today, I finally made it to my Brussels patch of Rouge-Cloître/Roodklooster for the first time this year.  It started really well, with a Goshawk perched near the entrance being mobbed by several Magpies plus a Carrion Crow, which, at one point, divebombed it and yanked its tail!  I got several of the scarce species I hope to see there at this time of year, including Goldcrest, Firecrest and 3 Teal but the pièce de résistance were Hawfinches.  I'd already spotted one amongst a small flock of Greenfinches and was walking along the tree-lined path near the allotments when this one flew up from the ground.  I fumbled for my camera and managed to get this first shot but, after a while, it returned to the path to feed, showing ridiculously well for such a shy and secretive species.  I ended up with 41 species around the reserve, plus a Peregrine seen from the tram on my way there.

Snowy start

The first weekend of 2026 brought snow and sub-zero temperatures to most of Belgium, including Brussels, so I had no desire to do my traditional New Year's tour of my patch and planned to stay indoors and catch up on various things instead, not least my blog.  I had just published the first part of my 2025 review and was about to prepare lunch, when my phone started going crazy with news of a first for Brussels just 20 minutes away!  I got dressed as quickly as I could and rushed out without lunch, trying not to slip over on the snow and ice.  There were already a handful of birders at the university campus when I arrived and it didn't take long until I was watching my 7th Hume's Leaf Warbler, a species I first twitched in The Netherlands in 2012 and have seen just five times since (four in Belgium plus one in Israel).  Amazingly, this bird was discovered by people looking for the Pallas' Warbler reported the previous day and seen by just one person.  The Hume's showed well all weekend long but there was no sign of the Pallas', until Monday evening when someone discovered the Pallas' Warbler's roosting spot, to which it has returned to sleep every day this week, although I've not yet been to see it.  Other than that, the only other birding I've done so far this year has been from my balcony plus a return visit to the Brambling roost in Anderlecht.  The first bird arrived alone around 16:15 and sat waiting for his friends to arrive.  By 5pm, there were around 300 of them, much less than last week, no doubt as a result of the New Year's Eve fireworks, but still lovely to see in the evening sun.

2025 review - birds

2025 got off to a good start with international twitches to two lifers but rapidly ran out of steam, with just 1.5 more for the rest of the year.  Here, as usual, are my best birds of the past twelve months (lifers in CAPS).

January - the gorgeous, 1st winter male MOUSSIER'S REDSTART I successfully twitched near Montpellier.
February - another international twitch to the hugely popular SPECTACLED EIDER found on Texel in early January and which stayed until early June.  Against all expectation, he reappeared in early October but, unfortunately, became sick and had to be taken into care last week.

March - Long-tailed Tit (Brussels); a tip from a photographer I meet regularly on my local patch led me to one of their nests.
April - Savi's Warbler (Uitkerkse Polders); having seen my first one for Belgium there in 2024, there seemed to be a considerable influx this spring with at least three singing birds.
May - BALEARIC SHEARWATER (Spain); good looks, including comparisons with Yelkouan Shearwater, of this long overdue lifer during a birding trip near Sitges with Catalan Bird Tours.
June - Tree Sparrow (Berlin); Moorlinse Buch has become my 'patch' away from home whenever I visit Berlin so I was especially pleased to see the local Tree Sparrows with some very cute fledglings.
July - Lammergeier (Alps and Pyrenees); an immature passing right over me in the Alps followed by prolonged views of two adults later in the month.
August - Hoopoe (Brussels); another one on my local patch, in exactly the same spot as the last one three years ago, this one even showed well for one of my guided tours.
September - White Stork (Brussels); some unusually successful vismig forecasting resulted in me seeing a flock of around 150 from my balcony, with a second, smaller group later in the month.
October - Common Rosefinch (Vlieland); a self-found, 1st-winter bird was the rarest species during another autumn weekend on Vlieland.
November - Goshawk (Cologne); a pair seen exceptionally well in a city park.  Berlin is famous for its city Goshawks but I had no idea they were in the parks of Cologne too.
December - Brambling (West Flanders and Brussels); three on the ground under a feeder at a reserve in West Flanders were eclipsed by the discovery of a huge roost (at least for Brussels) of around 600 individuals towards the end of the month!

So, as you may have noticed, a lot of my 2025 birding was outside of Belgium, resulting in a Belgian year list of 191 species, the last addition being a male Smew at one of their few remaining regular wintering spots in Belgium.  I added three new species to my Belgian list - the heard-only Thrush Nightingale, Woodchat Shrike and Pectoral Sandpiper, and my balcony list stayed on 80 species although I finally managed to see a silhouette of the Tawny Owl which first appeared briefly in November 2024 and seems to have returned. 
My various trips around Europe took my year list to 282 species, the lifers being Moussier's Redstart, Spectacled Eider, Balearic Shearwater and heard-only Red-necked Nightjar, which, together with a few armchair splits, takes me to 2810 in the world.
My bird of the year, of course, has to be the rock-star Spectacled Eider; here's hoping he recovers and can be released again to continuing hanging around with the Common Eiders off Texel.

Boobies!

After Vlieland, I still had some days off and was hoping to get away somewhere warmer.  I had more or less decided on the Algarve anyway, when news of an immature Red-footed Booby hanging around Sagres harbour sealed the deal.  I arrived into Sagres late in the afternoon with little time before it got dark so decided to check out the harbour quickly and there it was, sitting on a buoy.  Of course, I didn't have my camera with me but at least it was still around.  The following morning, I checked out the Ponta da Atalaia headland with its abundant Thekla Larks, and the very first bird I saw out to sea was the booby going off to fish, followed by lots of Gannets plus a few Balearic Shearwaters, which was a lifer for me earlier this year in Spain.  By the time I got back to the harbour, this time with my camera, the booby had returned from its fishing foray and was back on its favourite buoy.

Not a lifer since I'd already seen them in Hawai'i, this was my second booby in the WP, the first being a Brown Booby I saw on the Jordanian side of the Gulf of Aqaba from Eilat's North Beach.  The next two days were mainly spent at the Cabranosa migration watchpoint although the strong south-westerlies meant that little was migrating apart from Chaffinches.  Once the wind changed, however, we did get a nice group of 65 Griffon Vultures, as well as two Black Storks.  I created a bit of a stir amongst the local birders by relocating a juvenile Red-backed Shrike, apparently very rare in this part of Portugal, and some seawatching from the scenic Cabo de São Vicente, the south-western tip of mainland Europe, gave me my best-ever look at some Great Skuas.  I had hoped for a Great Shearwater or two but I knew the chances were small so I had to content myself with a few distant Cory's and my only lifer of the trip being this Austaut's Blue, the southern Mediterranean equivalent of our Common Blue.

J'aime la Vlie

I first visited Vlieland thanks to 2023's Yellow-browed Bunting.  I really liked the island and its birding opportunities, especially during autumn migration and so have been back there every year since.  My 2024 visit was timed too early and ever so quiet as a result, although I did discover how good the island can be for seeing rainbows.  This past week was ever so windy with yet more rainbows but the birding was quite good too, by far the highlight of my 2 days on the island being the 1st-winter Common Rosefinch I found.  Bramblings were absolutely everywhere and one of the few species migrating into the strong westerlies.

The same winds were pushing seabirds ashore, with Guillemot, Arctic Tern, Kittiwake, Little Gull, several Red-throated Diver and a distant Fulmar, while the Kroonspolders held the usual collection of waterfowl, including several Pintail.

The second morning started rainy so I spent the first few hours in my room, watching passing flocks of Oystercatcher, until I heard a gull screaming and noticed this magnificent adult Arctic Skua chasing it around the ferry harbour, giving me one of my best-ever looks at the species.  Whilst birding on Vlieland can produce rarities, for me it is more about the sheer numbers of birds with the constant calls of Brent Geese everywhere, and I ended up seeing or hearing 85 species on the island, plus a Rook in Leeuwaarden station on my 7.5 hour journey back to Brussels.

Owl overdose

The Uitkerkse Polders are by far the best place in Belgium to see Short-eared Owl, with numbers fluctuating each winter, although I have never seen more than two at once.  The past few days, however, simply ridiculous numbers have been reported and I was convinced people were double-counting birds in flight but decided I had to check out what was going on.  Having started in Heist, where I got a great view of the long-staying juvenile Barred Warbler, I arrived at the owl location to find around 30 birders and four visible Short-eared Owls roosting amongst the grasses of a dried-up hollow.  By the time I left, two owls had already started hunting yet another nine were still sitting on the ground, making a total of 11 (and, going by other people's counts, it seems there were even more hiding out of sight)!  I've no idea if this an early influx or, perhaps, as some people have suggested, the result of successful breeding in the area but now is definitely the time to get to the polders if you want to see a Short-eared Owl or eleven!

Mooreigers

I spent a day at the coast this week hoping to see some migration but the southerly wind put paid to that idea.  The trees, on the other hand, were alive with Goldcrests plus the odd Firecrest and, whilst I'll never beat my photo from 10 years ago, I did at least manage a shot showing why they are called Goldcrests.

The polders already contained a 500-strong flock of White-fronted Geese, which seems rather early to me and bodes well for the winter.  Cattle Egrets used to be scarce along the coast but are now more or less guaranteed, mirroring their rapid range expansion elsewhere, and this one also posed for a photo which does justice to its name, although I prefer my English bastardisation of their Dutch name, Koereiger.