A fantastic autumn day and the chance to visit one of the best birdwatching sites of Bavaria - what could a birder wish more. Yesterday I enjoyed a brilliant afternoon on the observation tower of the "Altmühlsee", which is situated in the southern part of Middle Franconia. The most obvious difference of this site to all my regular birding destinations is the large number of birds that you can see there. When I normally get not more than 300 Greylags on the local lakes I get here a lot more...
Originally, I hadn't planned to go birding today, but when news broke that a Little Crake had been spotted at my favourite site, the Großer Wörth, I couldn't resist the temptation to give it a try. All in all, the situation wasn't very comfortable, one the one hand I didn't have much time and on the other it was rather wet and cloudy. However, I was fortunate to find already two birders on site that already spotted the bird. It was feeding on the opposite shore, exactly where it had been seen...
Unfortunately, the last weeks haven't seen me birding very often. Nevertheless, the migration season takes place normally at the moment, though there is few special to report about. Waders are right now passing through, yet there aren't many suitable resting areas, because on the one hand the water level is high again and on the other hand many actually "good" sites have lost in value over the last years, since vegetation has settled down on the sandbanks. Perhaps a juvenile Mediterranean Gull...
After the rainy weekend it was a benefit to get out birding again. For today I had ambitiously planned to arrive at sunrise at the Teichwiesen of Stressenhausen, an interesting wetland area in South Thuringia (approximately an one-hour-drive from Bamberg away). Although it didn't worked exactly, I was greeted by perfect morning light in Stressenhausen. The navigation on site is rather simple: There is a signposted car park for the nature reserve at the southern edge of the village, from where a...
After the rather unspectacular July the first days of August were ornithologically astonishingly productive. In this period I've often visited the "Großer Wörth" area, as it turned out that for some reason it's currently the best place for observing waders here. However on my last walks I've only seen common species like Lapwing, Common Sandpiper and Little Ringed Plover. Nevertheless this isn't so strange for the season, since migration is just about to roll on. Hopefully the situation...
Recently I've visited the Hochreinsee again, which I haven't done for quite a while now. However, on the first glance it wasn't that exciting there, just the usual species like Greylag Goose, Great Reed Warbler and Marsh Harrier. Fortunately, I spent a bit more time at this place, as after a few minutes a group of large gulls circled over the lake. Of course, the most were certainly Yellow-legged Gulls, which is by far the most common species of these here in inland Germany. As it turned out a...
Originally, I had planned to visit the Fichtelgebirge today, in order to find an obviously tame Three-toed Woodpecker that had been reported on ornitho.de. However, this morning I skipped this plan, as yesterday evening a Thrush Nightingale had been discovered in the Mohrhof-Weihergebiet. The eastern sibling of the more common Nightingale looks and sounds very similar to the latter and isn't actually easy to identify. So it is quite understandable, that I'm normally a bit sceptical when I read...
As according to the weather forecast storms are approaching in the next days, I used these two last nice days with intensive birding. Yesterday I paid the Ortolan Buntings at Grettstadt a visit, which has become kind of a tradition over the last three years. Unfortunately, it was a bit windy and so the buntings were just reluctantly singing. In the end it must have been roughly as many as last year, but due to the suboptimal conditions I can't be absolutely sure. Last year wasn't actually a...
It has been quiet on this blog for quite a while, mostly because I've spent three weeks in Israel, which is by the way not only a beautiful country but also terrific for birdwatching. Soon I'm going to report more on my experiences there as well, but for now I'll focus on my current sightings here at home ...