As 2018 draws to a close, it is time for my traditional review of the year, the birdy highlights of the past twelve months being as follows (lifers in CAPS);
January - ROSS'S GULL (NL); a first-winter successfully twitched in Vlissingen harbour, where it showed extremely well. One of those near-mythical, high-Arctic species which very rarely turn up this far south.
February - HOUBARA BUSTARD (Canaries); excellent, close-up views of perhaps five individuals in the desert-like habitat of Fuerteventura.
March - Icelandic Redwing (Brussels); a self-found individual, this is an extremely rare bird in Belgium as a whole and probably the very first for Brussels.
April - Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (Brussels); the final year of the Brussels woodpecker survey, I finished off in style by finding two drumming birds in my sector as well as seeing a female.
May - WESTERN ORPHEAN WARBLER (Namur province); a long walk amongst beautiful scenery for a few brief glimpses of this first-for-Belgium.
June - SCALY-BREASTED WREN aka Southern Nightingale-Wren (Cristalino); the first of just three lifers seen during my summer season at Cristalino and, without doubt, the best story of the year.
Back in 2014, I was walking one of the forest trails by myself when I saw what looked just like a Dipper hop up onto a log, flick its wings, call briefly, then disappear. Despite mailing a local expert with a description, including the call, it remained a mystery. Fast forward to this year, and my earlier-than-usual arrival at the lodge coincided with a lot of Nightingale-Wren song. This is a very rare species at the lodge and one I'd only only ever heard a handful of times in just two of my years there. One morning, there was even a bird singing close to the dining room and a little bit of playback by another guide brought it out into the open, whereupon I immediately recognised my 'Dipper', finally identifying the bird I saw four years previously!
July - BLACK MANAKIN (Cristalino); perhaps my most wanted bird at Cristalino this year, it took me four attempts to connect with the one and presumably only individual on the reserve which was originally discovered by my friend Rich Hoyer in 2016 and is still in the same spot!
August - WHITE BELLBIRD (Serra dos Carajás); we started birding with its distinctive call echoing around the hillsides, eventually stopping the car right underneath a singing male with a female in attendance.
September - Greenish Warbler (Belgian coast); technically not a lifer since I heard one singing in 2017, this was the first one I got to see, at a well-known, coastal migrant trap.
October - Hume's Warbler (Zeebrugge); a very unexpected, self-found rarity while looking for Yellow-browed Warbers (which I also saw).
November - Blackcap (Brussels); a rather quiet month, the biggest surprise came right at the end of the month in the park next to my apartment when I heard a subsong I didn't recognise at first, eventually deciding it had to be a very late Blackcap although I still wasn't convinced until I actually saw it.
December - Firecrest (Brussels) - seen regularly throughout the month in the same park as the Blackcap.
The bird of the year award goes to the amazing-sounding White Bellbird, seen and, more importantly, heard singing within its minuscule range south of the Amazon, where a small population remains in a patch of protected forest. The sound really has to be heard to be believed and is almost deafening up close but the male is a snazzy-looking bird too, with its immaculate white plumage and ridiculously long wattle looking for all the world like a worm hanging down from its beak!
This was one of 50 lifers (36 in Brazil, 10 in the Canaries, plus Ross's Gull, Western Orphean Warbler, Buff-breasted Sandpiper and Paddyfield Warbler in Europe) I saw this year out of a total year list of exactly 700 species! Of these, 174 were in Belgium, with short birding trips to Rutland Water, Paris and The Netherlands taking my European total to 191 species for the year.
Being away for the whole of June, July and August meant I did very little Belgian butterflying or dragonflying this year yet I still managed to add another seven species to my Belgian butterfly list before I left for the Amazon, including Glanville, Pearl-bordered and Dark-Green (below) Fritillaries.
