Many birds at Dutch Balgzand

This Dutch video is about Balgzand nature reserve.

Translated from Landschap Noord-Holland in the Netherlands:

The bird count by Leo Hofland, Rudy de Hoog and Roelf Hovinga on Saturday, October 17th, 2015 at Balgzand was unforgettable. Under favorable circumstances many species were counted in very high numbers, ultimately resulting in more than 180 000 birds! As far as we can tell there were never such high numbers of birds counted in this area before. Dunlin and knot are always the most common birds. That was not different, together they accounted for more than 130,000 individuals. But other species did well in this count too, such as brent goose (1996) grey lag goose (1005), shelduck (7555), wigeon (9164), teal (1,206), pintail (4968), oystercatcher (4221), avocet (1015, long time since we had such numbers in Balgzand), gray plover (1630), curlew (11,950) and black-headed gull (1011).

Little egrets, spoonbills and Australian shelduck

Especially from the Van Ewijcksluisschor till the Quarantaine the mudflats for several hundred meters from the seafront were thronged with birds. Also nice were the songbirds which turned up during the count in the strangest places, apparently there had been there the night before much migration. There were thrushes, goldcrests, a chiffchaff, robins, wheatears and dunnocks scattered on the marshes and reeds. More rare species: little egret (21), spoonbill (7), Australian shelduck (1), red-breasted merganser (17), goldeneye (2), peregrine falcon (4), water rail (2), common sandpiper (1), spotted redshank (50), Icelandic godwit (1), greenshank (11), curlew sandpiper (1), Eurasian rock pipit (13), gray wagtail (1) and wheatear (11).