Rock pipit and other Scheveningen harbour birds

Today, to the southern jetty of Scheveningen harbour. As it is one of the few rocky places on the mainly sandy Dutch coast, often birds who like rocks congegrate here.

Purple sandpipers are here often. Others saw them today on the jetty, but we didn’t.

Many oystercatchers and turnstones.

This is a video of a rock pipit in Denmark.

A call of a rock pipit. It flies to the left.

Later, the inner harbour quay. Often, scores of turnstones here in winter. But not so today, probably because the snow hinders them in finding food. Near a pole, three sleeping, one awake. Later, others join them, increasing the group’s size to ten turnstones and one juvenile herring gull. Then, a woman passes, walking her dog. All birds fly away.

RSPB figures suggest the UK breeding population of herring gulls has declined dramatically – from 750,000 pairs in 1993 to 378,000 pairs now: here.