Spring already?

February has been predominantly wet and very windy so most of my birding has been from my apartment, where a pair of Nuthatches have been regularly visiting my balcony.  A few of the local Monk Parakeets spent a couple of days refurbishing last year's Magpie nest before deciding that wasn't the kind of real estate they were looking for.  I did try a twitch in the rain to the male Falcated Duck, which has been bouncing around a couple of sites on the border between Flemish Brabant and Limburg, but it failed to show.  This past week, though, the sun came out and it suddenly felt like spring, especially when a Brimstone, my first butterfly of the year, appeared during a walk around my Brussels patch.  Pretty much everything that sings was in song, including a very vocal Middle Spotted Woodpecker simultaneously calling to his mate and excavating a nesthole, with a pair of Great Crested Grebes also displaying.  The heronry, which started as just a single nest a few years ago, now contains six occupied nests!

Home and away

I've seen some good birds from home lately, including this immature Sparrowhawk and a bright, male Brambling, my only one of the year so far, accompanying a group of Greenfinches.  Since my last post, I tried revisiting the Ross's Gull in Nieuwpoort but the silly thing was absent for most of the day and didn't show up til mid-afternoon, long after I'd given up and moved on to the polders instead.  I still had a good, winter day's birding, though, with plenty of waders around, including around 200 Dunlin and at least 400 Golden Plovers, plus a hunting Hen Harrier, some Pink-footed Geese and a big group of around 80 Gannets fishing offshore.  Yesterday, I did my annual winter tour around Zeeland which I had to skip last year due to Covid-related travel restrictions.  It was the first time I'd been to The Netherlands since August 2020!  We must have seen several thousand Golden Plovers, with good numbers of Barnacle Geese, a few Brent Geese, at least five Spotted Redshank, Purple Sandpiper, a male and 2 female Smew, Eider and Red-breasted Merganser.  I've only had one other, short birding walk in the Sonian Forest which was fairly quiet but did reveal two pairs of Bullfinch, yet my year-list has made good progress nonetheless and now stands on 109 species (96 in Belgium).

Red-breasted Merganser by Theo Hortensius

Let's twitch again

After all the chasing after new species for last year's Belgian big year, I decided that, this year, I would only twitch lifers or new birds for my Belgian list.  I didn't expect to be at it again quite so soon but today twitched this female Ring-billed Gull in the province of Antwerp.  Interestingly, she was first discovered to be in Belgium on 27 December without anyone actually seeing her, based on the GPS signal from the transmitter on her back.  It didn't take long for people to find her, though, and she's been entertaining the crowds ever since since.  Today, she was in her favourite field for catching worms, together with a couple of Common Gulls.  She was fitted with the transmitter in Poland and is at least 19 years old!

The end of an era!

Our female Ferruginous Duck is no more!  First found on my Brussels patch on 13 December 2012, during a severe cold spell which resulted in virtually all other open water in the area freezing over, my past two visits have failed to find her and she was last seen on 11 November.  A presumed adult in 2012, that would mean she reached the grand old age of 10 (back in 1987, the oldest-known, wild individual was only 8 years old).  The next two pictures show how she has matured over the years, the first being taken in December 2012, the second in January 2018.

As you can see, she became much more male-like with maturity, resulting in several mistaken reports of male birds.  She is also the individual wild bird I have gotten to know the best in all my time birdwatching.  Until autumn 2019, she would disappear to parts unknown for the summer but, presumably since going through duck menopause (I'm not making that up!), has not bothered to migrate and remained here all year-round, making her the one and only resident Ferruginous Duck in the whole of Belgium.  I have thus taken dozens of visitors to see her over the years and knew all of her favourite places so I rarely had a visit to my patch without finding her.  She would also allow me to get very close before calmly swimming away.  Very much a loner, she was occasionally found in the company of Tufted Ducks, attracting the attentions of bachelor males, and I even saw her being courted by a male Wood Duck once.  Goodness know what the resulting hybrids would have looked like had that succeeded!

My year-listing, despite seeing 53 species on on near my Brussels patch yesterday, doesn't quite feel the same without her.  I'll miss you, Fergie.

2021 review

Another challenging year dominated by the global pandemic is almost over so it is time for my traditional review of the past twelve months, starting with my month-by-month birding highlights (lifers in CAPS).

January - Dusky Warbler (Bredene); last year's bird of the year lingered on in its favourite park so I got my year listing off to a good start by paying it a third visit on 2nd.

February - Woodcock (Ostend); a prolonged cold spell brought unprecedented numbers of this species to the coast, where I got a rare opportunity to see them on the ground.

March - Oriental Turtle Dove (Heist); my first real twitch of the year and the first new bird for my Belgian list.

April - FRANKLIN'S GULL (Beveren); a major expedition was required for me to see this American vagrant during its short stay in deepest West Flanders.

May - Griffon Vulture (Brabant Wallon); 24 slowly taking off from their overnight roost.

June - Nightjar (Kalmthout Heath); a long-overdue reacquaintance with the churring goat-milker.

July - Rock Thrush (Alps); a nice male seen exceptionally well on my first evening in the Alps.

August - Zitting Cisticola (Heist); a constantly-displaying bird confirming that the species is slowly recolonising the coast.

September - Nutcracker (Logbiermé); 3 or 4 birds comically struggling their way uphill with their crops full of acorns.

October - Short-eared Owl (Brussels); THE surprise of the year was a migrant seen from my living room!

November - Western Swamphen (Het Vinne); another successful twitch to a first for Belgium.

December - Ross's Gull (Nieuwpoort); another first for Belgium seen really well as it repeatedly passed just above my head.

So, Franklin's Gull was the only new bird I saw this year and is, therefore, my bird of the year for 2021.  It was not the only addition to my lifelist, though, since sorting through my Brazilian photo's for another project led me to review a parrotlet picture I took back in 2011.  At the time, I was told that flavistic individuals were much commoner amongst Blue-winged Parrotlets than the local Dusky-billed Parrotlets.  Since the former species had never been recorded in the area and the local bird-guide told me it wasn't possible, I forgot all about my picture.  Spurred on by several, unconfirmed reports of Blue-winged Parrotlets in exactly the same location over the intervening years, and noticing a second, normal-coloured individual, which also shows the all-important pale upper mandible, I thus sent my picture to some new contacts I didn't know back then, all of whom agree it is the first documented record of Blue-winged Parrotlet (now split into three species) for the Alta Floresta region!

As an antidote to the various travel restrictions, I set myself the dual targets of seeing 250 species in Belgium and 150 within Brussels this year.  I soon realised, though, that the two were incompatible since birding in Brussels meant I was missing good stuff elsewhere, and vice versa.  I thus dropped the Brussels one (which ended up on 116 species) in favour of a Belgian big year.  It was difficult to stay motivated throughout the ongoing pandemic, however, especially once I'd caught up with most of the easy summer migrants, meaning the remaining species all required considerable effort or several attempts to see.  Despite falling just short, at 240 species, this is still my biggest Belgian year so far and the additional effort resulted in seven new species for my all-time Belgian list (Oriental Turtle Dove, Franklin's Gull, Sooty Shearwater, Rustic Bunting, Guillemot, Western Swamphen and Ross's Gull), which now stands at a respectable 325 species.  I left Belgium on just four occasions this year, all very brief, adding Hooded Crow (Berlin), plus 7 species in the Alps (Short-toed Eagle, Hoopoe, Crag Martin, Rock Thrush, Rock Bunting, Western Bonelli's Warbler and Italian Sparrow), and thus taking my overall year-list to 248 species.  With all my focus on finding new birds, the butterflies and odonata took a back seat this year and I didn't see any new species of either in Belgium, although my butterflying break in the Alps was very successful, with a total of 26 new species out of 61 identified in just two full days there. 

I do not plan another big year attempt for 2022 and am looking forward to some more relaxed birding, regularly visting my Brussels patch and finding my own birds rather than constantly chasing after other people's.  
Stay safe, healthy and make the most of what nature has to offer in 2022.

Velvet curtain

It's been five years since I last saw a Velvet Scoter, which is a very scarce winter visitor to Belgium, so Xmas Day saw me taking the train to an appropriately-named station in East Flanders to twitch two of them on a nearby lake.

They were easy to find, with a distant Red-necked Grebe as an added bonus, plus a male Black Redstart at Ghent station as a nice, unseasonal Xmas present.  Since I'm working the rest of the week and won't have time for any more twitches, the curtain thus draws on my big Belgian year with 240 species under my belt.  I had hoped for 250 but some terrible weather combined with a stubborn cold during my time off earlier this month put paid to that!

BE #240 (Velvet Scoter)

BRU #116

Glossy Xmas

Yesterday I walked 18km from Diksmuide to Nieuwpoort just to see these three Glossy Ibis, which are frequenting a nature reserve roughly half-way between the two.  It seemed to be a pair with their youngster (the middle bird) and are part of a strange, mid-winter influx of this species at the moment, with lots of them turning up in the UK.  The area was really good, containing lots of White-fronted plus a few Pink-footed Geese, as well as Marsh Harrier, Grey Partridge, Golden Plover, Goldfinch, Fieldfare, Redwing and a hunting Sparrowhawk.  Best of all, though, was the Long-eared Owl roost I discovered along the bank of the river IJzer, with at least eight owls present.  This was a big surprise and only about an hour's walk from Diksmuide, so it's great to have another owl roost I can take people to.  

BE #239 (Glossy Ibis)

BRU #116