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.
