Cow or Cattle?

Since a few weeks a Cattle Egret has been spotted near the Naardermeer quite close to where I live.
In Dutch this bird is called Koereiger, since you can't read Dutch I should translate that for you: Cow Egret. The most common 'joke' that is made here when this bird is spotted somewhere were no cows are present is: Why is this bird called Cow Egret, shouldn't it be 'Sheep Egret' *hahaha*. Or something like that, it's quite lame and I don't participate in it.
Enought dwell on this stupid joke, Cattle Egret here ya go!

^Quite a typicle Dutch landscape, without the egret though..



^Gave a nice flight show

Quail

Just before dinner I got a text message that Hans had found a Quail not far from where I live, I decided to go for it.
When I arrived the Quail called a few times and was quiet for the rest of the time, 1 White Stork migrated south and a few Sparrowhawks flew by.
Later that evening I got a message of a Knot that was present in the Bovenmeent.
It was a juvenile bird moulding to adult plumage so I didn't went looking for it, I'll wait till the next (adult summer) one.

Allmost 500 miles...

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's

A 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!

Pectoral fun

Yesterday a Large White-faced Darter Dragonfly was reported along the Kromme Rade.
I saw this species last year but that wasn't quite satisfying so I tried my luck today.

At the Snip 1 Pied Flycatcher was singing allmost similar to Common Whitethroat.
I saw 1 Green Hairstreak, the only place I know for this species is the Westerheide so this was a surprise.
A bit further 3 Redstarts were displaying, 1 sang like a Chiffchaff, Barn swallow, Pied flycatcher or Willow warbler, didn't knew they could do that.
In the Spanderswoud this Wood warbler was displaying quite near a path and I tried to get a picture and this was the result:

Somewhere else in the Spanderswoud 1 Black Tailed Skimmer was present.
In Gooilust my first Northern Hawker and Common Blue were present.
At the Kromme Rade 1 Goshawk and a Hobby flew by, 3 more Redstarts were singing.
Along the Kromme Rade a lot of Dragonflies and Damselflies flew: Downy Emerald, Four Spotted Chaser, Hary Dragonfly, Large Red Damselfly, Red-eyed Damselfly, Blue-tailed Damselfly and Variable Damselfy.
Of all the butterflies this Map Butterfly was the most beautifull, they are not common in this part of Holland.

The Large White-faced Darter was easely found and with the help of a other odonata lovers scope I could get a few pictures:

Later I saw 2 Scarce chasers and heard a few Cranes fly by, but I didn't see them...
This White wagtail was near the parking lot.


In the evening I got a report of a Pectoral Sandpiper, I immediately left for the bird.
It did show well but not close enough for good pictures.

^Note the pointy chest figure



Later, Harry de Klein found a Jack Snipe.

Hoopoe

When I got back from school today I decided it would be nice to drop by the Kromme Rade, a long stretched path right through good habitat for warblers and especially a good place for Dragon- and Damselfly's.
When I started packing I got a phone call from Jan that he was looking for the Iberian Chiffchaff but couldn't find the right spot, I put him on the right track and later got a message that he'd found the bird.
The more interesting phonecall came 1 hour after that.
When I was minutes from leaving my phone rang, Marijn, said the text on the phone. That could be something interesting!
By the first words of him I was stunned, did he say Hoopoe? Yes he did, it was located right behind my house on the heath.
While getting some more info from him I packed my telescope, tripod, camera and an other phone to get the message to more birders.
Within 5 minutes I was on the right location but didn't see any birders.
I started scanning the heath but it wasn't working, no bright orange, black and white striped bird was crawling around here...
Then, just as I hang up some fellow birders, I spotted the bird! But it was gone seconds from discovery...
The bird flew to the forest and I couldn't locate it there, tough luck, but it was a Dutch tick for me so I wasn't complaining.
Other birders soon joined the search for the bird but we couldn't relocate it.

Texel

Texel is the biggest of the 5 wadden sea islands, I've been there 2 times before but I was too young to remember.
My dad has the most marvelous job of all, he works all over the Netherlands and often in other country's, I never came to think about it of joining him but since a few months I do.
Today he needed to go to Texel so I joined him.

Above is the route I walked, I didn't rent a bike because it was to damn crowded and it would have taken me some hours...

^One of the best pictures I made today, looks like art doesn't it?

It started fairly good with a flying Sparrowhawk above my house, then 4 Black redstarts were singing on the Media park, (a closed area for public).
Together with a colleague of my dad (they needed to work remember) we started our trip to Texel.
As we joined the Germans and other Dutch people on the boat to Texel from Den Helder I spotted the first cool birds, a pair of Brent goose were foraging on the pier, 9 Eiders and 1 Turnstone were present as well.
The crowd on the boat was throwing bread into the air to see the gulls up close, I started photographing some but as we got closer to Texel I realised that my photo's were all ruined because of my iso speed.
I did get 1 desent shot of a Lesser black-backed.

^Texel in the distant
A few Pintails flew by, as did 2 Red-breasted Mergansers and a Eider.
As described above I didn't rent a bike and started to walk towards the dunes, 5 Linnets were singing along the track.
I decided to walk around the Mokbaai, were a lot of waders should be foraging.
No waders yet to be seen, I looked across the Mokbaai and saw that they were foraging at the far end of the baai, but I would check that later.
At the other end of the baai were 28 Brent Goose, 1 Grey plover, 24 Eiders and 4 Turnstones, a few nice sea birds and I enjoyed them well.
Texel is often recalled as an island of sheep, I did see a lot of them, among them was this youngster.
I wish I could be it, lying around and just sleep all day... man would I like that!

In 'The Petten' some Avocets were foraging.

The Spoonbills have their nests right in front of a lookout, very nice to see them so well!

^Some Brent Geese in the Petten

Mandarins

When I checked a pond where I went fishing as a little boy I spotted a Mandarin Duck.
That was a few weeks ago now and the number of Mandarins rose to 4, 3 males and 1 female, the 3 males try hard to impress the female but she doesn't seem to notice.
Yesterday I could make some pictures just before sunset, the colours are amazing in that light!

^The Mandarin spooked the hell out of the Coot by doing that, the Coot didn't know where to hide after this incident