Tuesday 26 November 2019

Frankfurt am Main

A brief trip to Frankfurt for a EURO 2020 qualifier to see the best team in the world play Germany was all in all not a terribly enriching experience for a variety of reasons. Each one on its own was bad enough but put them together and the overall result was one I have no desire to repeat. The downsides were as follows:
  1. It was cold, grey, damp and a typical  Central European winter scene. I think we had a brief glimpse of the sun on one day.
  2. Daylight was short to begin with and the weather didn't help.
  3. Frankfurt is a financial capital and is not really a tourist mecca..
  4. The Christmas market does not open until this week..
  5. We lost 1 - 6 and were expected to join in a Mexican wave - we refused!
  6. I picked up a cough and a cold and was generally feeling a bit miserable, well under the weather and not up to walking/birding as much as I would have liked.
There were a few brief moments of joy and happiness:
  1. I finally nailed a GSW for 2019.
  2. I got two other year firsts.  
  3. For 12 glorious minutes we were beating the Germans 1 - 0.
Here are a few photographs from the trip:

Beech woodland south of Frankfurt - easily accessible by bus and good range of woodland species including sparrowhawk, jay, treecreper, nuthatch, gsw, mallard and mandarin duck on a small pond.

River Main and the CBD
Old church
River Main looking upstream
A year tick
The riverside had a flood overflow area which provided Egyptian goose, black-headed gull, cormorant, greylag, mute swan, mallard, coot and moorhen. 

Finally a few of the WOW residents chilling in the low winter sun.



2019
160: Egyptian goose
161: Mandarin duck
162: Great spotted woodpecker
 
Bangor West
66: Mistle thrush

Belfast WOW

98: Stonechat




No comments:

Post a Comment