Pots of gold

No rainbows today but I did manage to connect with the pot of gold that remained hidden last time; a group of Dotterels! 
Numbers in this particular field in Flemish Brabant had been building up to a maximum count of 34 during the rainy weather of the past few days but today was my first chance to go there.  It also happened to be the first morning with clear skies so I was worried they may have left on the next step of their migration before I got there.  Sure enough, I arrived at the location to see no other birders at all, which is not a good sign.  Still, I began scanning and rescanning and turned up four Wheatears but nothing else.  I thus decided to to do a big loop of the field and eventually saw several other birders, none of whom stopped for more than five minutes.  The signs were not good at all.  I even convinced myself I heard them at one point but the faint calls were actually coming from an extremely distant parakeet in the nearest village!  Furthermore, the loop turned out to be a lot longer than I expected, taking me well away from the original spot so that, after an hour and a half of searching, I'd still not even circumnavigated the entire field but had already given up and decided to head home.  Just as I sped up, however, I caught a movement of something running in the field out of the corner of my eye, and got on it straight away to find a Dotterel, then another, then another!  After a quick scan, I'd first counted eight, but then I looked up the slope and found more; now there were 16 of them.  At this point, several Skylarks flew up from my feet so I briefly took my eyes of the Dotterels but then looked back only to find they had gone.  I was sure they hadn't flown off as I thought I would have noticed that but they were nowhere to be seen despite repeated scans of the same area.  I stayed put, though, hearing a Tawny Pipit, a scarce migrant in Belgium, passing over, and getting a good view of this juvenile Hen Harrier.  The photo isn't great but it does show the typical bulging arm and five-fingered wingtip which help differentiate this species from the other harriers in flight.

Suddenly, after half an hour, the Dotterels were there again, all sixteen of them, in exactly the same spot!  I was starting to believe Dotterels used the same teleporters that antpittas use in the Amazon to move around the forest without being seen when the mystery unravelled itself.  One by one, the birds crouched down, blending in so well with the mud and stubble, that they disappeared before my very eyes.  I knew where they were and was looking right at them but I could no longer see them.  Now that is what I call camouflage!  I waited another ten minutes or so, but again, they remained invisible as they weren't moving, so I left them to it, very pleased at having located them and adding another species to my Belgian list.  None of the other birders even bothered to check that end of the field as they'd not been seen there before so I was the only one to see them today.  Here is a very heavily cropped photo of two of them; for some real Dotterel pictures, have a look at these taken by a Polish birder last week.

Somewhere under the rainbow

I tried twitching some Dotterel yesterday as it is peak time for their migration and various groups have been turning up in Wallonia, with this one particular area on the border between the provinces of Hainaut and Namur having one to five birds for the past ten days or so.  Unfortunately, the weather made it virtually impossible to locate them, although it did provide some nice views as you can see above.  At one point, I thought I heard their calls, but they are virtually impossible to find amongst the stubble unless they happen to fly and I'd underestimated just how much suitable habitat there was for them to hide in.  I did get a nice, second-year male Hen Harrier hunting as a consolation prize, though, and there were lots of Whinchats and Yellow Wagtails around, with a few Yellow-legged Gulls amongst a large flock of Lesser Black-backs.
As there wasn't much other than rainbows to take pictures of, here's another insect from my last day out butterflying near Liège.  The Dutch call this the 'pyjama bug', which is so much better than the English name of Striped Shield Bug.

More summer blues

This summer's blue theme continued during a walk in the south-east of Brussels earlier this week with this Common Blue posing nicely.  I was surprised to find two Firecrests, a species which is primarily a passage migrant and winter visitor here.  In fact, the only time I've ever seen them in June, July or August was down in Belgian Luxembourg, their breeding stronghold, so seeing two here now is a good indication that they may have bred within Brussels this year.  Another rare breeding species for Brussels, this Little Grebe and its partner were busy feeding two young chicks.

  
The biggest surprise of the day, however, came in the form of a large, unidentified bat foraging for insects in broad daylight.
Today, I visited a nature reserve near Liège for Chalk-hill Blue butterfly (below).  I had noticed that this particular reserve held a thriving colony of this species, which I have never seen, so I decided to give it a try.  I must have seen around 100 individuals, many of which were in a mating frenzy, with several males swarming around each female.  The Dutch name translates as 'pale blue', which is quite appropriate as it looks almost ghost-like in flight, quite unlike the other blues.  I saw 20 species of butterfly in total, including a bonus, new species for me, a Dingy Skipper.

Summer blues

As this is my first European summer in three years, I'd more or less forgotten just how quiet things get at this time of year.  Once the temperature climbs above the mid-20's, seeing even the common species becomes an effort, let alone discovering any rarities.  Still, I had a blue afternoon at a nature reserve south of Leuven earlier this week, starting with this female Holly Blue.  This is another butterfly which is difficult to photograph as it spends much of its time up in trees and was the first one I'd seen well enough to identify since last year.  The 'green team' tried their best to equalise the score by fielding two very close Green Sandpipers plus a Greenshank, with at least four Common Sandpipers and a juvenile Little Ringed Plover completing the wader contingent.  The blues had one last ace up their sleeve, however, as I entered the final hide to find this splendid, male Kingfisher sitting in full view just outside.  Oh, and the flower that was attracting all the butterflies in my last post turned out to be wild marjoram, also known as oregano.  Many thanks to Gilbert for the identification.

Finding my marbles

I headed 100km due south of Brussels today for a walk in the countryside around Couvin, close to the French border.  At one point, I heard a strange, chattering call, a bit like that of a sparrow, but it was actually being made by a Melodious Warbler.  Nothing was singing, however, and the warbler, some Hawfinch, a few Yellowhammers, and a Red-backed Shrike were the only noteworthy species I saw.  As usual at this quiet time of year (at least as far as birds are concerned), my attention thus turned to the butterflies and I was very pleased to get this photo of a White Admiral as they normally stay high up in the trees.  The best was yet to come, though, as I came across a clearing which was buzzing with at least ten different species of butterfly plus a rare Pygmy Moth, all feeding on a fragrant pink flower I haven't yet identified.  One of the first butterflies I noticed was a fritillary and this one, as opposed to those I saw in Belgian Luxembourg, was playing by the rules and sitting nicely on the flowers for me to take pictures.  It held its wings constantly flat, however, so it took me a while to get a decent shot of the underside pattern, which is crucial for identifying many members of this family.  I knew it was a new species for me whatever it was but, once I got home, I was perplexed as the pictures seemed to match up with Marbled Fritillary, which doesn't occur in Belgium according to both of my fieldguides.  It should have been Lesser Marbled Fritillary instead according to the range maps but it just didn't 'feel' right for that species.  I then went online and discovered that Marbled Fritillary, a south-European species, is rapidly spreading northwards, having first colonised Belgium in 2006 and since then spreading to 40 different localities, with a strong concentration in the area around Couvin.  So, I found a species I didn't even know occurred in Belgium, and another beauty at that!

Shrinking emperors

I made another visit to one of my favourite places, yesterday; Belgium's oldest nature reserve adjoining the village of Torgny at the southernmost point of Belgium.  This really feels like a completely different place to anywhere else I know within Belgium as Marbled White (above), a species I have never seen elsewhere, was again the commonest butterfly present.  The birds, too, were significantly different to what I am used to, with Yellowhammers and Golden Orioles singing all around, a Black Kite circling in the distance, and several Red-backed Shrikes, including one or two recently-fledged juveniles.

 
When I first visited this area three years ago, my sightings within the reserve itself were overshadowed by the discovery of my first, long-awaited Purple Emperor in the forest just to the east.  I did the same walk through the forest this time around so, naturally, my thoughts turned to that emperor sighting when I reached the spot, which I easily recognised.  Almost immediately, I noticed another unsual butterfly and suspected it might be another emperor, except this one had an obvious orange colour even in flight.  It took what seemed like an eternity for it to settle and, when it did, it refused to open its wings for the longest time but my patience eventually paid off.

   
So, three years and four days after seeing my one and only Purple Emperor, I found the even rarer Lesser Purple Emperor in exactly the same place.  I really should visit this spot more often!

Stonechat island (part 2)

After such a successful day with our guides, we didn't really do much for the remainder of our short stay on the island other than walking around the area we were staying.  Here, the elegant Audouin's Gull was the only gull present and seemed to be quite common so we got to spend a lot of time admiring them.  We spent even more time, though, watching the antics of a fearless immature Shag which was chasing fish amongst the bathing holidaymakers off Can Pastilla beach.  It even seemed to be deliberately using the tourists by chasing the fish towards them so that they would then panic (the fish, not the bemused bathers!) and swim straight back into its beak.  I also identified a few butterflies I'd not seen before, such as Cleopatra, Southern Gatekeeper and this Southern Brown Argus which was posing so nicely, it was just asking to have its photo taken.