Ruff, redshank and wigeon

Sunday 7 April, to Het landje van Geijsel.

The Landje van Geijsel is a bit of farmland, to the south of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It is a bit of wetland at this time of the year.

Every year in February, farmer Geijsel lets the water in for waders and other birds to benefit from. He has built a hide for birdwatching.

As we arrive, a chaffinch sings.

Hundreds of wigeons. Yesterday, a thousand wigeons were counted here. Today, still many, but less than a thousand. Maybe that is because today is basically the first day this April when the weather is starting to look like spring. The cold north-east wind of previous days has stopped. It is sunny. That may have led some wigeons and other birds to stop waiting, and to continue their spring migration.

Quite some black-tailed godwits. Northern lapwings on muddy islets. Jackdaws near the hide.

Redshanks. Some show courting behaviour; though we did not see a mating.

Black-headed gulls, common gulls and a lesser black-backed gull.

A few ruffs. Unfortunately not in their beautiful summer plumage yet, though some of the ruffs show signs of that approaching.

Shoveler ducks; and scores of teal.

Three Egyptian geese flying.

A curlew flying.

A male pintail duck, resting on a bank.

An oystercatcher.

A great cormorant flying.

A little ringed plover. It is trampling the mud to catch worms. Like its much bigger distant relatives, herring gulls, sometimes do.

Two snipe close to the hide. They fly away.

Two grey lag geese flying.

A barnacle goose flying.

A common sandpiper on a muddy islet.

Unlike two years ago, no sign of ring-necked parakeets nesting in the tree near the hide.

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