Dermot Breen's Blog: The Netherlands December 2017

Saturday, 3 February 2018

The Netherlands December 2017

A belated post on a short trip over the Netherlands I did back in December. I flew into Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam on the morning of the 12th and left again on the afternoon of the 14th. The primary goal of the trip was to try and catch up with Lesser White-fronted Goose and Red-breasted Goose. I succeeded in accomplishing the latter target but was rather unlucky in the former. There had been several reports of different Red-breasted Geese on and off during the previous month at a few spots across the country. The nearest report was only a few kilometres north-west of Rotterdam from where I based myself for the next two nights. My trip coincided with decent amounts of snow which had been on the ground for a few days. Every road was perfect but it did have an effect on the birds especially the geese. After going through several hundred geese (the majority being Russian White-fronted and Greylag with smaller numbers of Barnacle, feral Canada and Egyptian Geese) I eventually picked up a pair of Red-breasted Geese which had been previously reported in the general area of Noord-Kethel. They were in a relatively small flock of geese but were about 800 metres away. Even at that long distance they were obvious enough especially for a goose! It would have been nice to have decent look at what was a lifer for me but I should glad I managed to see them at all. With the poor light already decreasing I made a bee-line for the Lesser White-fronted Goose location - Oudeland van Strijen. This is one of the main wintering grounds for the small Swedish breeding population. I ran into a helpful Dutch birder who pointed me in the right direction. I also had good information on the location thanks to the very useful Waarneming.nl website. The Dutch birder also mentioned that the snow could have pushed off the geese to another snow-free site. I searched the spot until dark but didn't get a sniff of any LWFG.

I started my second day at this same spot first thing in the morning after eventually managing to escape the Rotterdam traffic. I could see that the snow was slowly starting to disappear but there were still significant snow coverage. While scanning from the car I managed to drain the car battery of the rental car. The automatic headlights remain on if the keys are left in the ignition. Lucky I managed to convince a passing local to give me a hand to jump-start the bloody thing, lesson learned! After a few hours without any success I decided to head out to the coast and birded the area near Stellendam. This consisted of more polderland, sand dune systems, saltmarsh and mudflat. A few nice species here included Spoonbill, Cetti's Warbler, Firecrest, Snow Bunting, Brambling and Twite.

I only had a few hours to spare on the third day before flying home. Most of the snow had now melted. I was back again at the polderland near Strijen to look for LWFG. There was huge increase in the numbers of geese in the area particularly Barnacle Geese which had been largely absent the two previous days. There must have been several thousand geese in the whole area. I again searched the usual LWFG spot from all angles but had no joy. With an increasing mind-numbling migraine pounding in my head I called it a day and made my way back to the airport. I checked a large park within Rotterdam hoping for a few woodland species but saw little of note to be honest. I'm not sure if the Netherlands has a national bird but if not then it should probably be Eurasian Coot with the huge amount of water in the country, they seemed to be everywhere. It was interesting to see so many Great White Egrets throughout the country. I even managed to "twitch"three Cattle Egret at the LWFG site, they are still considered a rarity in the country. I didn't see a single Little Egret though?
I took virtually no shots during the three days. Shortly after arriving back in Dublin I checked the Waarneming site to see if there had been any news reported from my last day. It was a little soul destroying to see a report of 23 Lesser White-fronted Geese and a single Red-breasted Goose from Oudeland van Strijen after I had left!