A very occasional non-book post, to gather the prettiest birds we found in and around Groningen this year.
The town itself is small enough that you can easily get to the outskirts and find, for example, an avocet pretending to be a duck:
Or the reed/polder area to the southwest of town, which has plenty of bluethroat:
And teal showing their best sides:
Further towards the coast, we had a close encounter with a rough-legged buzzard (a bit too close to compose!):
Another trickily close bird was this hen harrier, but I was able to get a shot of the ring and find out that he’s a young male, hatched on one of the Dutch islands last year:
I also dug into the life history of an oystercatcher, eight years old and presumably entering his/her prime:
Lots of geese, of course, including my first very dapper Brent geese:
Unfortunately there are always some hooligans:
Some impressed with their numbers, including the turnstones who made themselves at home at the port:
And there were one or two golden plover on the island:
