Holland horror show

I was in Holland last weekend but, apart from a nice selection of shorebirds, including my first Little Stints of the year, there was little sign of migration.  We did briefly get to see a migrant Merlin, however, and enjoyed great views of an immature Goshawk trying to catch a pigeon without success.  In fact, the most successful predator we saw was a Great Black-backed Gull which had somehow caught a Great Crested Grebe and was dragging the struggling bird up onto the mudflats.  Despite managing to break free a few times, the grebe was just too far from water to reach safety and was eventually ripped open for the gull to feast itself on the fresh fish meal contained inside. 

Migrant moments

Nothing is more typical of the month of September for me than this Migrant Hawker dragonfly.  Although I saw my first of the year in early July, their numbers really peak between late August and early September and they can now be found pretty much everywhere.  Last week, I guided a couple of visiting birders at the coast, with a migrant group of 20 Spoonbill passing overhead almost as soon as we stepped out of the tram!  There were a few other migrants around, including several Wheatear, two Hobbies and an immature Cuckoo, with several Marsh Harriers showing well as they quartered the reedbeds.  The following morning, I took another visitor to my Brussels patch, where we managed to connect with no less than 40 species, including Kingfisher, Crested Tit, and an eclipse male Red-crested Pochard.  As we were watching several Chiffchaffs busily feeding, we glimpsed another bird amongst them sitting unusually upright, with subsequent views allowing us to clinch the id as a migrant, 1st-year Spotted Flycatcher, a species I'd only seen there once before.  Vive la migration!

The perfect twitch

I'm having some very good twitching luck of late.  After last week's lifer Stilt Sandpiper, I managed to photograph my lifer Keeled Skimmer (Orthetrum coerulescens) earlier this week.  This is a very scarce dragonfly in Brussels since we are right at the limit of its range.

Today, I tried twitching a juvenile Little Crake at a small nature reserve I'd never been to, less than an hour from Brussels and a short walk from the nearest train station.  I arrived, the other birders present said "There it is", and I was watching the crake before I could even set up my telescope!  It stayed out in the open water long enough for me set up my scope and see it really well, before it disappeared back into the reedbeds, after which it only appeared intermittently and much further away for the rest of the morning.  If only all twitches were so easy!  Little Crake is a new bird for my European list since I'd only seen them in Israel before, and there were actually two juveniles present so they probably bred at the reserve.  Strangely enough and in a repeat performance of the Black Hairstreak coincidence, I looked at my notes and discovered my first-ever Little Crake was EXACTLY 19 years ago, on 31 August 2000 at Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin!  There were masses of Swallowtail butterflies flying around and lots of Cetti's Warblers singing, so I was really pleased to discover a nice, new location close to Brussels I'd probably never have visited had the Little Crake(s) not been found there.

450 bis

The last new species I added to my lifelist was the Paddyfield Warbler I twitched in Zeebrugge way back in October of last year.  At the time, it was my 450th species in Europe but I have since lost one and fallen back to 449 as the two seemingly wild Snow Geese I have seen in Europe were both deemed to be escapes.  On Tuesday, though, I decided to give the Stilt Sandpiper near Amsterdam a try.  This was a lifer and had already been present for six days so I took the train to Amsterdam and hired a bike.  Almost two hours later, I finally arrived at the reserve and immediately recognised the distant bird thanks to its distinctive silhouette, with its comical-looking, drooping bill.  I got some nice scope looks at the bird, which was at an advanced stage of moult from summer to winter plumage, but it remained too far for pictures.  There were quite a few other waders present, including Green Sandpiper, Greenshank and several Wood Sandpipers, as well as this adult Spoonbill being relentlessly harassed by its constantly begging offspring.

Tuesday was the seventh and last day of the Stilt Sandpiper's stay as it has not been seen since.  I was very pleased, therefore, that I decided not to wait until the weekend, even if I could no longer feel my legs after the 50km or so of cycling; the first time I'd ridden a bike in four years!

The Roseate Isle

I spent last weekend birding around Dublin with the main aim of removing the question mark next to my one and only observation of Roseate Tern.  That was back in 2007 on the beach of Zeebrugge but, being the only observer to have seen the bird and having since seen several other Commic Terns that looked similar, I was no longer sure of my original identification.  My local contact met me from the airport bus and we were soon birding the suburbs of Dublin, where we found the local, hibernicus race of Dipper.  We then headed to an islet along the coast where a few Roseate Terns breed but it was already deserted, with just a few Shags loafing around and a distant Manx Shearwater out to sea.  After a visit to Booterstown nature reserve, we made our way to Sandymount Strand for the tern roost.  Until then, I had been hearing the occasional Spotted Redshank call but, strangely, not seeing any.  My guide then pointed out the same calls coming from the rapidly growing flock of terns and I realised I had been hearing Roseates, their calls easily picked out from the din of the 3000 or so other terns present.  Seeing them was another matter entirely but we eventually saw 4 or 5 birds we were both convinced had to be Roseates before a young Peregrine ploughed right through the flock, almost succeeding in picking off a tern and creating total panic as the the flock scattered in all directions.

Just a few of the 3000-4000 terns at Sandymount Strand

The following day and half were spent visiting a few other sites around Dublin and adding some more species to the list, which came to 78 species in 2.5 days, one of the last sightings we made being this ever so young deer we stumbled across in Phoenix Park.  Many thanks to Joao for all your help; I'll be back when the Roseates are in breeding plumage, if not before!

Purple streak

I've made two unsuccesful attempts this month to try to find my lifer High Brown Fritillary in the south of Belgium.  On the first attempt, in the province of Namur, I got a brief look at the elusive Lesser Purple Emperor instead.  Two days ago, it was this Purple Hairstreak at a nature reserve in Belgian Luxembourg which more than made up for not connecting with my target species.  Purple Hairstreak is not particularly uncommon and quite widespread but notoriously difficult to observe since its spends most of its life at the top of mature oak trees, rarely descending to ground level.  I knew it was the first I'd seen in a long time but, looking back at my records, I was amazed to discover my only other sighting in Belgium was EXACTLY ten years before, on 29 Jul 2009!  The only other naturalising I've done of late was some dragonfly photography in Brussels, where this Red-veined Darter, a recent coloniser from the Mediterranean, seemed very much at home thanks to the all-time high of 40°C we reached last week.

More Belgian butterflies

Whilst photographing the Weaver's Fritillaries, I noticed several of them feeding on this patch of flowers so I sat down and waited.  Of course, once I was ready and waiting for them, no more fritillaries came but this Pearly Heath did oblige.  During another, short walk in the province of Namur, I got to see my second ever Lesser Purple Emperor.  It only descended ever so briefly from the treetops so I wasn't quick enough to get a picture but this time it was the beautiful, summer form of the Map Butterfly which decided to cooperate instead.