2nd November 1988

A black‑tailed godwit interrupts our breakfast with a loud whistle as it flies over. A tree sparrow announces its presence with a mixture of chattering and house sparrow‑like chirrups. It plays hide and seek in the bushes around the camper and is difficult to see. Blackbirds are particularly numerous, and there are fieldfares, robins, tits and a great-spotted woodpecker too. This is the life!


The IJsselmeer

Given the IJsselmeer's reputation for wildfowl and sea eagles we head for the coast again. From a lakeside cafe near Mrns we listen to a dozen or so Bewick swans chattering among themselves, a hundred or so mallard enjoying a few jokes and black‑headed gulls screaming at anything and everything. The water is so shallow that even a 100 metres out it comes up only to a heron's knees. On a mud‑bank further out there is a large cormorant roost, perhaps a thousand birds being joined by further groups of ten to fifteen flying in from the north.

Each Bewick seems to have the company of one or two goldeneye which dive whenever the swan put its head underwater. Goldeneye feed mainly on molluscs, crustaceans and insect larvae, so perhaps they are going after creatures disturbed by the swans pulling up potamogeton (pondweed) rhizomes ‑ their main winter food. However, in the autumn, potamogeton also features in the goldeneye's diet, and the swans may provide an easy way for them to get that food.

Following the coast road westwards we find more geese, small groups of greylags and white­fronts grazing out on the pastureland, joined by other small groups apparently coming from the IJsselmeer. There is a bit of bickering as pecking orders are being established, but generally the geese seem interested only in feeding. In the low winter sun it is often difficult to identify the geese in flight as the leading edge of the whitefronts wings can look as pale as those of the greylags.

Scanning the fields we catch sight of a hare racing across a paddock towards us. It comes up one side of the dyke, across the road, down the other side and under a gate ‑ the only place for crossing the ditch without getting wet ‑ and then halfway across the next field before stop­ping to look around. The cause of its agitation seems to be a farmer and his dog in the distance.

On the IJsselmeer side of the dyke is a large reedbed with signs around the perimeter stating that it is a nature reserve ‑ one of two such strips along this coast. Just beyond are some thousands of pochard, mostly males, roosting or bathing. Some fifty thousand males gather on IJsselmeer to moult in June, though many move on south for winter. Having arrived first on the wintering grounds, the males tend to stay put; the females and juveniles leave the breeding grounds much later and have to move further south to find suitable unoccupied habitat.

A very cold north‑easterly wind blows up during the middle of the day and we see increas­ing numbers of fieldfares, redwings, lapwing and snipe. At Hindeloopen we watch a flock of about 300 barnacle geese come in from the south-west. They fly in a big loop coming in behind us and flying back south over the land. Later another thirty or so fly south over the water.