Jan and I decided this would be a nice day to go somewhere, but where?
Jan thought it would be nice to go and watch seabirds at Camperduin (famous migrating point that brought much rarities in the pas).
We took the long way through Flevoland and that wasn't without reason, we both wanted to see Montagu's Harrier that has one of its last strongholds in Flevoland, we saw three birds forage including 1 male + female displaying!
^male Montagu'sA bit further I finally nailed Common Whitethroat for this year!
It was wagtail heaven here too, several wagtails were foraging on a small field, many alba's and flava's but allso 6 thunbergi, 1 flavissima and 1 yarrelli!
After a 1 hour drive we arrived at Camperduin, Jan needed some coffee so I joined 2 other birders and started looking at the sea.
Seawatching is something special, the one or two times I've done it I didn't see anything rare so it can be quite frustrating looking at water for 3 hours, but although I didn't see anything back then I did have a good time!
This time it was something different, it was migrating time so it wasn't till long when the first group of Bar-tailed godwits flew by.
The 2 other men were excellent trained seawatchers and (when I asked) they explained me things like how to distinquish Knot from Bar-tailed Godwits on a long distance.
After a while I even was brave enough to call migrating birds so they could write it down, the first thing was a Curlew, then 20 Bar-tailed Godwits and even a Greenshank they both missed!
I wanted to see a Little Tern and I succeeded eventually with 9 birds flying North.
Grey Plovers were easy to pick out because the deep black armpit, BT Godwits were easy as well but Dunlin and Sanderling were quite hard.
But I eventually got grip on them and identified most of the birds that flew past, the Common vs. Arctic Tern were very hard and from the hundreds of terns that flew by I could identifie 4 Arctic Terns but they allmost flew through my shirt.
Some numbers:
376 BT Godwits, all North
41 Grey Plovers, all North
11 Dunlin, all North
2 Curlew, North
9 Little Tern, 8 North 1 South
100+ Sandwich Terns, North but some foraging
6 Whimbrel, North
35 Sanderling, North
219 Knot, North
1 adult Northern Gannet, foraging
1 Little Stint, North
28 Common Scoter, North
2 Little Gull, both South, 1 adult and 1 juvenile
And some more normal birds like Common Ringed Plover and Turnstone.
Jan couldn't stand the wind and watched from the restaurant.
As I walked back to the car I heared a Grasshopper Warbler singing nearby, as I listened to the bird a small falcon flew by: a Merlin! As soon as I had my binoculars to my eyes the bird was gone.
Near the migrating point there are some good spots for waders so we checked them.
At the first one (the Putten) a group of 200 Sandwich Terns was present, a few Avocets and BT Godwits were foraging.
Because of the drought in Holland the last week most of the other spots were dried out, near the Stolpen we found a group of 54 BT Godwits and 9 Knots.
Near 't Zand we found an other group with 9 Greenshanks an few Avocets and 1 Spotted Redshank.
From a hide near airforce command center the Kooy we saw some more Avocets, group of Brent goose, 1 Pintail and these 2 very cooperative Shelducks.
Jan noticed a Little Gull that was present on a small lake.
From the edge of the Kooy we could see amazing numbers of birds, thousends of BT Godwits, hundreds of Knots, few Common ringed Plovers, many Eiders, 3 Little gulls and a few Grey Plover.
1 BT Godwit was foraging in front of the car and (with a little help of Jan) I could het this picture.
After a while Jan noticed a Red-Breasted Merganser, a very nice male!
While driving to Den Oever 2 Med Gulls flew past the car.
Den Oever wasn't really exciting, and what we hoped for (Kentish Plover) didn't show...
1 Spoonbill was present though.
On the other side of Den Oever we found a male Greater Scaup.
A Wheatear foraged somewhere south of Den Oever.
As we drove back to home I noticed a few Marsh Harriers in Flevoland, 1 Wheatear on the Arendbuizerveld ( 'Long-tailed Buzzardfield') and 4 Fieldfares migrating near the Grote Praambult.
As we got home we saw that we'd drove 480 Miles!
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