Purple and pink

I was back in the polders yesterday, guiding for an English couple visiting Belgium.  We started with 6 Purple Sandpiper feeding alongside Blankenberge pier and the very last birds of the day were a flock of around 120 Pink-footed Geese.  In the meantime, we also managed to find 2 Firecrest, 2 Dunlin, 3 Snipe, 2 different Hen Harriers, a Marsh Harrier and 3 Long-eared Owls, with a day total of 63 species.  Although we saw Pink-footed, White-fronted, Barnacle and Greylag Geese, the numbers of geese in the polders were not huge, no doubt due to the very mild weather.  The thousands of Lapwings, on the other hand, were putting on a magnificent show, with large groups constantly flying around.  At one point, we even had a two-tier flock made up of Lapwings and around 400 Golden Plovers above them.

Still learning

No matter how long one has been birding, there are always difficult birds to challenge one's identification skills.  Earlier this month, I saw this falcon at the coast in an area where Kestrel is abundant so that was my initial reaction.  As I got closer, however, the small size and dark colouration had me convinced it was a Merlin instead so I took a few photo's to make sure.  Merlin is a bird I get to see less than annually and so have had very little practise with.  When the bird took off, its size and back colouration confirmed my initial reaction; it just appeared small since I don't get to see Kestrels sitting on the ground very often.  As if to confirm how much I still have to learn, I also convinced myself this dragonfly was a scarce Moustached Darter since I couldn't see the typical thorax stripes of the much commoner Common Darter yet that is what it turned out to be.

Colourful cousins

Little did I expect to be adding another new species to my lifelist so soon after returning from Ghana, but this Booted Warbler, one of the few European species I'd still not seen, was found in Zeebrugge on Tuesday so I made a beeline for the coast the following day and saw it really well, with a nice Yellow-browed Warbler as an added bonus.  This made up for the horribly long, wasted journey to Drenthe (NL), the previous day to try and see the Yellow-browed Bunting, which had disappeared.

On Friday, I spent the morning on my Brussels patch, finding a record 56 species, including 4 migrating Woodlarks.  This male Red-crested Pochard, one of two there, was sitting on the same log as a female Common Pochard, which made for a nice picture.

Picathartes!

This time last week, I was watching a Black Sparrowhawk in Atewa Forest, on the final day of a 17-day birding tour of Ghana, organised and guided by Kalu Afasi of Malimbe Tours.  Appropriately, we got to see all four of the Ghanaian malimbes, which are red and black, forest-dwelling members of the weaver family, but the main target bird of any trip to Ghana is the White-necked Rockfowl, aka Yellow-headed Picathartes or the bird that time forgot.  Seeing a picathartes means a long hike through the forest to their nesting/roosting boulder and then sitting and waiting for them to arrive, usually late in the afternoon and just as it is getting dark.  We only had to wait about half an hour for the first one to appear but that didn't stay for long, then two birds appeared just as the heavens opened.  Having gotten satisfying looks at them and a couple of grainy pictures with what little light remained, we got up and sheltered under the boulder from the pouring rain.  One of the picathartes then hopped onto the viewing bench and sat there watching us in a surreal, tables turned situation!

The sparrowhawk was the final and 190th new bird of the trip, during which I saw a total of 347 species and heard another 23.  The main focus was on seeing as many species as possible so I didn't take many photo's but will be posting some of them during December in my yearly online advent calendar.

Stormy stuff

It was a wet and very windy weekend so, naturally, I headed to the coast to try and connect with some seabirds.  I arrived late Saturday afternoon to the above sight and immediately spotted an adult Gannet, with three Little Gulls putting on a wonderful show as they foraged alongside the pier.

Around 100 Brent Geese passed by and a Guillemot on the sea was a nice bonus.  With lots of skuas, shearwaters and even a couple of Storm Petrels reported along the coast, I was optimistic Sunday would be just as good and was in position first thing.  The first hour, however, I only managed to find a couple of Sandwich Terns and a group of 12 Shelduck.  The wind had shifted slightly and there was hardly any migration at all, so I gave up and went down to Ostend to twitch the juvenile Shag in the harbour, which was conveniently sitting right next to an immature Cormorant for comparison.  From the harbour wall, I then spotted a very dark long-billed bird out on the sea which had me perplexed for the longest time until I worked out it was a juvenile Gannet.

This rather ragged, adult Kittiwake didn't look too healthy, allowing people to get very close, while a calling Whimbrel migrated over together with a Bar-tailed Godwit.  My plan was to then have a rest, until I noticed the reports of a Long-tailed Skua on Heist beach, so I rushed up there and got great views of my first in Belgium.  I have only seen them on their breeding grounds in Norway and Finland before, plus one wayward individual on Lake Geneva!

This morning was a bit better in terms of migration, with 3 more skuas I tentatively id'd as 1 Pomarine and 2 Arctics, several Mediterranean Gull and lots of Common Gulls passing by, plus a Razorbill on the sea making for a nice auk-double.  Saturday was by far the best day, though, and I just missed out on the really good stuff by arriving too late but still managed quite a few additions to my year list, which now stands at 199.

Ficedula flood

Could somebody please explain what is going on with Pied Flycatchers this year?  Most autumns, I would be happy to see a few but they seem to be absolutely everywhere at the moment.  Here is a summary of my sightings so far this autumn;

20 Aug - an early bird seen from my balcony; the second ever for my flat/balcony list

2 Sep - several around a lake in West Flanders where I have not seen them before

6 Sep - at least three amongst a huge fall of Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs at the coast

7 Sep - another heard from my balcony so I descended into the park to see it with a male Firecrest as an added bonus! 

9 Sep - two at my Brussels patch of Rood-klooster/Rouge-Cloître, where I have never seen any

10 Sep - presumably the same bird still in my neighbouring park with a 2nd reported by another observer

11 Sep (this morning) - both birds seen from my balcony

At first, I thought maybe I am more attuned to their calls and noticing things I may have missed before or was just doing more birding in the right habitat during their peak migration, but the statistics speak for themselves.

Park Tenbosch, where I live, has had just one autumn record (in 2020) and my bird of April 2021 before, although it was probably underwatched in the past.

Rouge-Cloître has had six previous records, 2 of which were spring birds, with the last ones dating from September 2020. 
According to Oslobirder Simon Rix, they've not had a particularly good breeding season so the crazy numbers this autumn are probably the result of the weather, although what exactly has caused so many to turn up inland instead of being concentrated along the coast is a mystery to me.

Yesterday was a particularly good day's birding since it started with the Pied Fly in my local park, followed by a successful twitch to six Dotterel and a Tawny Pipit in a field in Flemish Brabant, and finished with an evening visit to the Hoopoe which was found at Rouge-Cloître on Wednesday and for which I spent 1.5 hours searching in the rain in vain on Friday morning.  This time, though, I finally got to see it, even if it was too far for any pictures, thus making Hoopoe my 115th species for the reserve!

Early fall

I thought the migrant Pied Flycatcher I saw from my balcony was very early but, during a visit to a lake in West Flanders which has a breeding pair of Little Bitterns last week, there were lots of them.  I did get to see both the male and female Little Bittern in flight but they were too quick for any photographs.  This fox, though, was sitting out in the sun blissfully unaware I was watching it from within the hide.

This very young Blackbird also spent some time next to the hide swallowing berries which seemed far too large for it.

In Brussels this morning, I heard some Gold- or Firecrests, and the first Yellow-browed Warblers have already been seen at the coast so it looks like the autumn passerine migration is well underway.