Basel yes, Moscow no

Since I last posted the legendary green and white army finally failed to clinch a birding trip to Moscow. Not so much their fault as a deranged Romanian referee who saw a penalty no one else saw. It's been a while since I posted, due to the usual circumstances of travel, tiredness and then the worst cold I have had in a long time. This attacked me in Bolton almost two weeks ago and I am still struggling to do much without having to sit down and recover. The  48 hour jaunt to Basel with GAWA probably contributed to tiredness and made the cold that much worse. The  0 - 0 draw was actually a good result for an away trip but the penalty that never was in Belfast stopped my Russian list getting off the ground.

By working a late flight from Basel on Monday I managed to get a day's birding there. I linked up with a local birder known only as Mcnswiss2 who suggested the area around the Swiss Deer Park. This is close to the River Weise which is a tributary of the Rhine and both banks of the river are covered in  mixed deciduous forest.  This looked good for woodpeckers and also had the potential of late storks and flyover cranes. (A white stork was seen the day before and cranes the day after.) Target birds were woodpeckers, short toed treecreeper or continental long-tailed tits.

Unfortunately Mcnswiss2 was on holiday in Majorca and was posting mouth watering sightings on the Majorcan bird forum page.( ww.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=337219&page=62 ) Follow him on to pages 63 and 64 as well. Then the deer park, which is a small free private zoo was closed despite never ever closing!! Apparently it was a one day health and safety issue but that meant I spent a lot of time in and around the river area finding some feeding areas and a canal area I might otherwise have missed. The Swiss transport system is free for visitors which made getting around really easy, so I was so soon heading down a suburban road which gave house sparrows, great tits, GSW and blackbird. The deer park entrance area gave good views of magpie, jays, another gsw, buzzard, black-headed gulls and carrion crows. Having decided the zoo was closed I walked towards the river which was in flood.  There's a path up top along the dyke, then a parallel path about 10 - 20 metres away from the river but lower down.  A look at Google showed several crossing points upstream so I was able to wander up and downstream along and away from the river while checking every tree in the area. All photos using an ipod, hand luggage only.

River channel

River channel

Tucked in to the bank out of the current

Lovely views

 

Just chillin'

 The river came up trumps with 6 goosander and heron and I eventually found the first of three small feeding stations which pulled in great tit, blue tit, nuthatch and marsh/willowtit. Northern Ireland has neither so I'm always playing catch up, but have seen willow regularly in Northumberland and Manchester.  I've only seen marsh tit once in Beds but I felt I was looking at them again. Thanks to the wonders of the internet I was able to contact Mcnswiss2 in Majorca re the default tit in the area to be told it was marsh tit - happy days. Having been advised to keep looking up for late storks which breed in the zoo I was presently surprised to see Egyptian geese flying around. These are all round London but I wasn't expecting to see them in Basel. Two of the three feeding stations gave very good views of red squirrels which I haven't seen for some time. I spent some time at each one simply observing and picked up robin and chaffinch.

Very well camouflaged squirrel

Slightly clearer

If you build it they will come

Must be a treecreeper here somewhere!!

The canal area, like the river, was brown and flooded and I only saw mallard and grey heron. By early afternoon I had criss crossed the area several times and decided to follow the Weise towards its confluence with the Rhine and Basel harbour at Kleinhuhningen  The river course here is urban but the walkway follows the bank down to the Rhine. The walk added grey wagtail and the river/harbour area held cormorants, tufted, pochard, little grebe, more goosanders herring gull and a large flock of Mute swans on the French side of the river. It was strange to see gulls and cormorants so far from the sea. If they came up the Rhine it is over 750 miles. 

Confluence

The mighty Rhine 750 miles from the sea!!

Basel port entrance

By the time I walked back to the Deer Park (still closed) I was tiring, light was dropping and temperatures dropped as well. One more circuit of the river and time to head for the bus, but about 100 m from the exit tunnel a small tit flock caught my eye and I scanned it hoping for long tails, no luck only great tits but lo and behold a treecreeper sneaked past up the trunk. I got good silhouettes as it climbed three trees and then  I lost it. I would have liked better views of my second only short toed treecreeper but I'll take it - the last bird of the day. My appetite was whetted in Basel and I would have a notion of going back for a holiday, there's not many places sit easily on the borders of three countries and gives free transport to visitors. Thanks to Mcnswiss2 for help and guidance on the day. If I make it back, and Tanya seems interested we'll maybe get that trip.

 

Back home both patches are below their targets and WOW was very quiet although the feeders pulled in bullfinch, reed bunting and redpoll. Teal number over 300 and common gulls are re-appearing while coot have disappeared. The area out front remained moorhen central.

Peak count was 97

2017 

210: Egyptian goose

211: Marsh tit

212: Short-toed treecreeper

 

Bangor West  
67: Greylag
 
Belfast WOW

98: Meadow pipit

99: Razorbill

8 weeks to go.

After a few weeks of not much happening things slowly moved recently. WOW delivered razorbill and meadow pipit, while Castle Espie came up with a grey plover. WOW has been fairly quiet lately although we have had some peregrine action as two birds sat on the light towers in the wind turbine area and made occasional flyovers. This made counting quite difficult if you were half way through counting the teal!

Male in front, female behind.

Teal close to window looking for millet

What peregrines??

 We also saw the return of an old friend from Iceland who featured in the blog back in February. The bird was ringed in Iceland in July 2007 and is now ten years old. Hard to get a good shot as it was continually moving and in the middle of a flock of feeding godwits. 

No bling but a nice winter plumage

Thursday saw my birding pal David and I heading for the Montgomery"hide" at Castle Espie to hit the rising tide, which we did successfully. You need to be there about 30 minutes before high tide at Belfast which was 10.05. As you can see from the first couple of pictures it was pretty muddy. As the tide pushed up the birds either swim or fly up the estuary past the hide. As they have knocked the roof off the hide to discourage anti-social behaviour the birds give it a wider berth than they used to but you still get good views. 

View to Scrabo when we arrived at 10.04

Assorted birds feeding

Whoopers in the Comber river, there were over 100 in total.

One hour and fifteen minutes later the mudflats were covered and the birds were either floating on the tide or roosting on one of the many high tide roosts. There are three within sight of the hide but you really do need a scope to see them well. Once the tide reaches the banks of the lough it then spends a couple of hours simply filling up and getting deeper. If you arrive at High tide at Comber all you will see is a pretty full lough. You need to be there earlier to get the birds pushing up towards you. We had a rich full list and a splendid ninety minutes looking at brent geese, shelduck, wigeon, teal, whoopers, mute, curlew, redshank, lapwing, dunlin, grey plover, turnstone, eider, black-tailed godwit, little egret, grey heron,  black headed gull, herring gull, and great black-backed gull. The soundscape is as good as the viewing with bugling whoopers, guttural brent, peewitting lapwing, whistling wigeon,  spooked redshank, and the signature sound of Strangford Lough in winter, the call of the curlew. We even had a squawk from a little egret. If I could tape it and sell it I would make a fortune from people wanting a tape of nature to de-stress and put them to sleep. Sorry, nearly dozed off there!!

Shelduck

Mute swan

View to Scrabo when we left at 11.30

2017 

209: Grey plover

 

Bangor West
67: Greylag

Belfast WOW

98: Meadow pipit

99: Razorbill