Last week I had a work trip in Belgium, and although I was there a whole week, I only had one day to go birding. My work started on a Monday and so when planning the trip, I knew there was no way I could function leaving the night before and working the day after a red-eye flight. So I decided to leave Saturday night and land early Sunday morning in Brussels. This allowed me one day of stumbling around completely sleep deprived, looking for some birds in the typically bad Belgium weather.
The hotel my team was staying at for work was in Rixensart at Martin's Chateau du Lac.
This was only about 30 minutes from Brussels on the border of Flanders and Wallonia regions which are dutch and french respectively. Belgium is kind of a weird country in that the national languages are somewhat evenly split and it seems many of the French speakers don't speak Dutch and vice versa. I suppose you get that to a certain extent in Canada, but in Belgium it seems to happen fluidly in a much smaller area. My cab driver got me to the hotel by around 9:30 am so I basically had all day to find some birds.
Chateau du Lac - there was a nice trail all away around the lake adjacent to the hotel, so naturally that is where I started my walk. Originally I planned to take a cab to a nearby wetlands but it was raining and the cab situation was not reliable. I didn't want to get caught out in the rain and have to look for a cab. Initially the room was not ready so I had to check my bags with the front desk.
European Robin - as is usual with birds, you get most of them in the parking lot of where you start. These little songbirds will sing year round and there were tons of them around. Most of the birds I saw here were the same ones I saw on my recent trip to London.
Eurasian Blackbird - here is one someone should be renaming. Its not even a blackbird but actually a Turdus thrush.
I was a little surprised to see tons of Rose-ringed Parakeets here. I did a little digging and apparently they were established in Belgium before they were in London. Lore has it that the zoo keeper in Brussels intentionally let some out to provide some local color and then they spread like wildfire.
I was not expecting anything but Black-headed Gulls on the lake, but this one had white primary feathers which made me initially lean to Mediterranean Gull which was a lifer! However, upon closer inspection, the ear patch was not right for that species and when the bird took flight, I saw that it had some random black in the primaries. The underwing was not dark like a typical Black-headed Gull so there was definitely something going on here. Turns out that Mediterranean Gulls will hybridize with Black-headed so I then that is where I leaned. However, an eBird reviewer in Belgium reached out and confirmed it was just a partially leucistic Black-headed Gull. Double doh!
Weird bird.
Great Crested Grebe - the harsh light on the water was not good for photography.
I found a couple Gray Wagtails which I have seen in Norway before.
Common Chaffinches were also in abundance.
I believe all the Cormorants were Great and the Herons were Gray.
Great Egret is a species that has only been recently expanding further into northern Europe.
Best bird of the day was this Common Kingfisher in the pond right next to the hotel. This was a lifer for me.
Eurasian Magpies are common but I don't think I would ever grow tired of them.
It was nice to study the Gray Herons more because I would love to be the first person to find one in North Carolina and you need to know your difference between our Great Blue and the Gray which can be subtle if you aren't paying attention. The Gray had white upper legs versus the Great Blue's rufous pants and also the neck has more white and black streaking.
Egyptian Goose is an established exotic common throughout Europe.
I was able to check into my room and have lunch at the Chateau before setting off again. I looked at google maps and saw some farm fields about a mile up a big hill so off I went in search of some different habitat.
Once I got up the hill from the lake and through the little town, the countryside began to open up with farm fields. I picked up some distant Black Redstarts and more common species, but for the most part there was not much going on in the monoculture fields.
It seemed like most of the fields were chards or something like that.
I walked over an hour on country roads looking through some of the recently plowed fields hoping for some activity and finally found one field that had tons of Carrion Crows foraging so I took a spur road and hoped for the best. As I got closer I flushed a huge flock of Eurasian Skylarks which were perfectly camouflaged int he dirt.
Eurasian Skylark - a few remained in the stubble but they were far off and I only managed a few passable photos.
Most of my photos were of birds in flight as they periodically flushed and landed.
It was a little frustrating because they never really got close enough for a proper crushing.
Eventually I did spot an Eurasian Kestrel and a distant Harrier which I thin was a Hen Harrier. Only the kestrel came close enough for some pics.
It was getting late so I hoofed it back down the hill to the chateau.
Eurasian Moorhen
I ended up only 34 species after a whole day of birding in Belgium probably mostly because of the poor weather. It rained on and off the whole time I was there. The rest of the week was spent from sunup to sundown in all day meetings so the camera stayed in the bag.
I hope to head back and properly explore Belgium in the future.
