Though the May trip was a short visit it was over several days including a weekend ... Wednesday - Sunday, ample time to cover the important hides near Lauwermeer, watch swarms of migrating Waddensea waders, ride around the polderscapes and a peep to Termunten. And of course everything else in between.
The hide by Ezumazijl was a nice surprise in May ... lekking Ruff (Philomachus pugnax) with front rwo seats and tonnes of Redshanks (maybe Spotted somewhere in between). Most mornings the hide was empty especially during the early part of the morning. The flat polders were a treasure trove of raptors.
Nice views of early players of the Spring migration run along the coast from Wierum to Moddegat till Lauwersoog ...
I took along perhaps too much gear this first focus-on-birding trip ... digiscoping gear for videos with the EOS100D, brackets and scope as well as several lenses for both birds and landscape. Kinda tiresome lugging all those along esp the Kowa scope and tripods!
For future trips ... the digiscope setup would probably be dropped for a Nikon P900 to shave off weight. The camera setup remains but the landscape may change to a smaller mirrorless get up.
In anycase, was I was happy with the images collected during the trip. Only wished I had woken up earlier for the swarmes crossing the Waddensea every morning and shot images of the lekking Ruff instead of making videos. The German birders had it right ... long lenses and images only.
The pictures:
It's nice to be back on old stomping grounds and rediscovering it in a way at a much slower pace in a more focussed mode. I could've done more in the years before but two little ones proved you can only do that in fits and starts. It's more fluid now that the kids are bigger ... which means more birding time the way it should've been.
Images and words: Nazeri Abghani (c) 2015
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