Back just in time!

It's not just the smell of autumn which is in the air but plenty of migrants too!  Friday morning, I noticed lots of passerines going over my balcony so I sat down and counted them for one hour, totalling almost 200, plus five Cormorant.  The vast majority of the songbirds seemed to be Chaffinches and a few Meadow Pipits but I had a huge surprise when three Parrot Crossbills came past.  There is a major influx of these happening at the moment with unprecented numbers turning up all over The Netherlands and the first few appearing in Belgium.  I thus did another mini migration count on Saturday morning, this time counting 320 migrants in one hour, of which 230 were Chaffinches, with smaller numbers of Brambling, Redpoll, White Wagtail, Skylark, Blackbird, Redwing and Rook.  With all this passing through the centre of Brussels, it felt inevitable that something fantastic would turn up and, sure enough, whilst I was hiking in Germany on Sunday, Belgium's first Long-tailed Shrike fell into the ringers nets at the Zwin.  It was released in front of a lucky few and I was cursing myself for not staying in Belgium but it thankfully stayed overnight, allowing me to to go see it yesterday.  It kept returning to its favourite hunting perch and so the relatively modest crowd, for a national first at least, of around 50 people all got great, prolonged views and, I'm pleased to say, kept their distance.  Getting any kind of photo was a challenge, therefore, but here is a heavily cropped image where you can at least make out the colouration

I never expected to be watching a lifer within a week of getting back from Brazil and what a beauty it was too.  Bring on the autumn!