10th November 1988 - Schelphoek

The Natuur‑reservaat Schelphoek consists of a landscaped freshwater lake surrounded by mixed deciduous woods. It is possible to walk around the lake itself or through the woods around the perimeter. In a country where finding public conveniences has been like finding a needle in a haystack, we are amazed to find that a small toilet block had been provided along the route, discreetly out of sight behind some trees. (We did eventually discover that public conveniences were to be found at garages, cafes etc)

Birds on the water are much as expected ‑ coot, wildfowl, one red-necked and a dozen great-crested grebes, and about thirty dabchicks. A ringtail harrier circles the trees at one end of the reserve for a few minutes, a sparrowhawk hurtles past twice, a kestrel put in an appear­ance, and a buz-zard watches us go through the woodland where the usual birds are to be found, with the addition of chiff-chaffs.

Just to the east of Schelphoek are some wet meadows and an area that looks like a giant wader scrape, all of which form an important high tide roost for waders and wildfowl. The waders mostly come from the Roggenplat, a mud-bank just offshore in the Oostschelde Estuary, but out of sight in today's gloomy weather. To the delight of the local gulls there is also a municipal rubbish tip. This is the only place where we've seen any litter ‑ mostly plastic blown off of the tip.

We park the camper at the top of a dyke and have both telescopes in use for the next four hours. A huge cloud of geese appears ‑ four or five thou­sand mixed brent and barnacle coming in off the estuary. The brents land on the scrape and spend ten or fifteen minutes drinking and bathing before going off in groups of about a hundred to join the barnacles which went straight onto a field already occupied by a few hundred wigeon. After the inevitable grunting and honking which heralds their arrival, the feeding flock is relatively quiet. Most of the agitation is between the brents ‑ there always seemed to be another brent in the way.

A couple of fields away, on cultivated land, thousands of oystercatchers are roosting. When a group of jackdaws lands amongst them, there is much waking up, stretching and scurrying off to find a quieter place to go back to sleep. One oystercatcher stands out because of its relatively brown wings, perhaps a leucistic bird.

About fifty Bewick swans share the oyster­catchers' field, and we take a close look at their plumages. Adults and juveniles are obviously dif­ferent, but second winter birds are said to retain some grey‑brown feathers on the head and neck. We found the difference can be detected if there is an all‑white adult nearby, but some birds just look as though they have been feeding in dirty water. Just before dusk several groups of eight to fifteen birds fly in, or pass overhead. The latter are watched by those on the ground with an expression of 'am I missing something if I stay here?' Also in the field are curlew, golden plover, teal, pintail and a few hundred sleeping gulls ‑ the four common species and a single little gull.

The wader scrape is busy too as avocets, dunlin, redshank, godwits, snipe, turnstones and goodness knows what else come in to roost, along with thousands more oystercatchers, and hundreds of wildfowl roost on the water. Several times we hear a spotted redshank call and eventually locate one preening in a ditch by the road. For five minutes or so we are able to study its immaculate plumage from closer proximity that ever before, its clean white under-parts sug­gest an adult in winter plumage. It spends most of the time in water almost up to its belly, but moves into shallower water to feed, showing off its long red legs. Then it flies off trailing its bright red feet. We find it again (or another) feeding with a bar‑tailed godwit which make it look rather small.

In another part of the ditch an adult grey plover stalks through the water like a minia­ture heron. Every now and then it pecks at some­thing on the surface, but occasionally probes deeper and gets hold of a worm on which it pulls slowly, and with great concentration, to extract it from the mud, and then gulps it down.