It's been a while since my last update. Although not as nice as January, February has been pretty generous to me. I went out quite some times and made good use of my free public transport card (which all Dutch student get from the government). The first weekend of February, I went for Texel once again. I had seen the spectacled eider already on the January trip, of course, but I have some friends who also wanted to see the bird, so I went with them again as I wanted to get some nicer looks at the bird and Texel is a very nice place to be for birding. Once again we had a great day. The spectacled eider was not really much closer than last time, but the light and weather was much better and we had great views. We also got amazing views of the same twites, horned larks and long-tailed ducks I had seen a couple weeks ago, but a group of pink-footed geese were new for the year list. In fact, I had seen this beautiful goose only once before at my local patch, but that was a single individual that was very far away and I could only identified it from photos at home. I also got some waders that are uncommon away from the coast and both 'common' species of harrier in the Netherlands, although the marsh harrier was somewhat of a surprise as they are far more numerous in spring and summer than in winter. We also got stunning views of a male common scoter, easily the best views of this species I have had. So overall, a fantastic day.
114. European greenfinch (Chloris chloris)
115. Lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus)
116. Bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica)
117. European marsh harrier (Circus aeruginosus)
118. Hen harrier (Circus cyaneus)
119. Common scoter (Melanitta ngira)
120. Green sandpiper (Tringa ochropus)
121. European golden plover (Pluvialis apricaria)
122. Pink-footed goose (Anser brachyrhynchus)
123. Eurasian wren (Troglodytes troglodytes)
Some nightly haunts on my local patch got me a long-awaited lifer, and some good flight views of it too! In fact, we flushed many woodcocks during the night and I wonder how on earth I had never seen the species before, as they were everywhere! I also visited the Veluwe, the largest forest area in the Netherlands. I was mainly looking for black woodpeckers, but got a raven and two great grey shrikes instead, so that was not too bad.
124. Eurasian woodcock (Scolopax rusticola)
125. Great grey shrike (Lanius excubitor)
126. Common raven (Corvus corax)
My and my friends teamed up with someone from a Dutch birding community (it's always nice to meet new birders!) to visit the Maasvlakte. The Maasvlakte is probably the weirdest birdwatching place in the Netherlands. It is a man-made peninsula (very Dutch!) built to serve as an expansion of the Rotterdam harbour and industrial area. The peninsula that stretches out far into the North Sea, and therefore it can be a very good spot for seawatching, especially with strong onshore winds during autumn. This time of year, it is less good for seawatching, but we had chosen the location for another reason. Most of the Maasvlakte is covered in industry, but there are some large grassy and bushy fields, that are a magnet for birds that are migrating along the North Sea coast during spring and autumn. Mice are abundant in this field, and raptors such as kestrels, hen harriers and most excitingly, short-eared owls are attracted to this. We had come mostly to seek out the short-eared owls, but despite us scanning and waiting the fields for hours, they simply refused to come out. Luckily for us, the consolation prizes were good: some seawatching delivered a couple of gannets and the nearby Oostvoorne Lake and beaches got us snow buntings (incredibly, they were almost running over our feet), shore larks, common murre, bullfinches and a merlin. So definitely not a wasted day.
127. Reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus)
128. Snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis)
129. Common murre (Uria aalge)
130. Northern gannet (Morus bassanus)
Every year in early spring, thousands and thousands of cranes migrate across Western Europe to their breeding grounds in Scandinavia. This mass migration is usually mostly just east of the Netherlands, and basically visible mostly from the far southeast of the country. But with eastern winds, migrating cranes get blown to the west and some of them will fly over the Netherlands. This year, the cranes started migrating very early due to the spring-like temperatures we have been experiencing in western Europe. There have been quite some eastern winds lately as well, so there were good numbers of migrating cranes flying over the Netherlands last week. Of course I wanted to see some of this. I may have mentioned before that birding is becoming increasingly popular in the Netherlands. A good example of this is that someone has actually developed a website called Crane Radar. This website tracks the migration of cranes in realtime. If flying cranes are reported a while ago flying into a certain direction on waarneming.nl (an observation-reporting site that is widely used in the Netherlands), the radar will calculate (based on flying direction, winds and weather conditions etc) where those cranes 'should' be flying right now. It's pretty inventive. If you are a birdwatcher that has to work on a day with lots of crane migration (like me) it is very useful. You can simply keep working and refresh the radar every few minutes to see if there should be any cranes flying around. If there are, just grab your binos and run outside for a couple of minutes and look at the sky. Of course it's not always that easy, but it can work. Silly and lazy at it is, it did work for me at least! All my forest birding also finally paid off with a nice black woodpecker and even a crossbill. And a quick twitch while I was in the area anyway delivered me a nice rarity. So that's a wrap for February!
131. Black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius)
132. Pygmy cormorant (Microcarbo pygmaeus)
133. Common crane (Grus grus)
134. Red crossbill (Loxia curvirostra)
135. Song thrush (Turdus philomelos)
