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.
