GEESE GALORE, A WEEKEND IN THE SW NETHERLANDS. 2 NEELTJE
JANS AND FLAKKEE
On the Sunday morning, the clouds were a bit less dense, and the sun now
and then peeped through and gave the hazy atmosphere a fairy-tale
character, especially when looking out over the water. (Riet and I fully
agree that there is no light anywhere that can compete with the light in
the Zeeland landscapes and shores; but we may well not be completely
objective, having both grown up in the area.) We decided to start the day
on the Neeltje Jans 'work island'---when I worked here in the sixties the
Neeltje Jans and the Roggenplaat were high sand banks in the middle of the
Eastern Scheldt, with the deep gully Hammen between them and the island of
Schouwen: I have sieved sand-amphipods there forty years ago during ebb,
when the sandbanks were dry. Neeltje Jans was used as a basis when the
Easter Scheldt was dammed, so there were large flat areas for storage of
material, work harbours etc. Now dunes and a sandy beach have formed on
the sea side, and the old harbours are used for hanging mussel cultures.
But, typical for the Dutch, the workers have at the same time made a small
stony islet for birds to use during high water, with a beautiful bird hide
from which one can watch this islet.
It is a longish walk along the 'mussel-farms', where mergansers display
and Common Eiders loaf and call---these eiders had not arrived yet here in
the sixties. In the Hippophae bushes, full of the silken webs of the
destructive moths that clearly have had an outbreak last year, we find the
first Bramblings of the year, and along the shore Rock Pipits fly back and
forth. Thus early in the season the islet does not show an all that
diverse show as yet. Hundreds of Oystercatchers and Curlews absolutely
dominate, and otherwise there are only a few Shelduck, a Cormorant, and
various gulls: Neeltje Jans has Great and Lesser Black-backed Gulls,
Herring Gulls (that nest here in large numbers), Common gulls and
Black-headed Gulls.The star of the show is so absolutely the light over
the water, with the far away island-shores in pastel and the tower-stump
of Zierikzee mysteriously looming out of the haze in the far distance.
This beautiful light also shows the birds on the completely still water to
great advantage: once again Shelducks (they are everywhere in Zeeland),
lone Great Crested Grebes, displaying Red-throated Mergansers, and also
small flocks of Goldeneye, whose energetic courting rituals, where the
drakes throw their heads far back on their backs, always strike us as
faintly comical.
From Neeltje Jans, and after a luxurious breakfast, we decide to leave
Zeeland (technically, in practice the ambience is still much the same)
and drive north to the next island of Goeree-Overflakkee, where we want
to explore the south coast of Flakkee. Again we cross a new dam, the
Brouwersdam, but this one does not let the seawater through, so that the
sea-arm behind it, the Grevelingen, has turned into a polyhaline brackish
stagnant lake --too stagnant probably and plans are underfoot to change
the hydrography of the area once more and restore a measure of tides. As
it is now, the Grevelingen are still very attractive for shorebirds and
sea ducks, while the saltmarshes on the coasts have developed intop
impressive wetlands, with bushes starting to grow everywhere--cattle is
grazed to prevent the landscape from turning into woodland altogether.
Our first stop is near Ouddorp, where we were seduced into a side road
by another 'cloud of geese', once again Barnacle Geese, in the meadows;
there are also some Greylags among them, and here we also spot the only
two White-fronted Geese of the entire weekend---no idea where all the
'frost geese' went this weekend! We peep over the large and strong
sea-dike, and find a mudflat with some overgrown former sandbanks, full
of birds. A group of professional looking guys with large telescopes who
came behind us, betray themselves atonce by calling out '' all
oystercatchers" and walking away again; they could not have been more
wrong! True, there were lots of oystercatchers here (there are always
lots of oystercatchers wherever you turn in this region), but the vaguely
orangey stripe on the mud dissolves in the telescope into many hundreds
of Red Knots in a tight-packed flock (typical of this species), and the
busy dribblers in front of the many sentinel Curlews already have a
little black on their bellies and are Dunlins. Brent geese are scattered
over the flats, Wigeons occupy the vegetated flats, and a couple of Mute
Swans patrol the shallows.
The day goes on, though, and we are still far from home. So we reluctantly
leave and drive further south along the coast, trying to keep as closely
as possible to the south coast dike. By trial and error we find a
wonderful overlook a bit south of Dirksland, where the 'new landscape'
lies in front of us in all its glory: wet meadows, shallow pools, small
new bushland and isolated trees (many with a Buzzard on top),-- and birds
everywhere. Large flocks of Barnacle Geese graze on the meadows and fly
back and forth, many hundreds of Wigeons also graze in scattered flocks,
while the pools contain a lot of different dabbling ducks: Mallards ,
Teal, Gadwall, Shelducks of course, and also the first Shovelers of the
year. A somewhat larger faraway pool contains a small group of Whooping
Swans, clearly also already with feelings of spring, although they are
still far from home.
The air is full of birds: the geese, the ducks, large flocks of Lapwings,
with here and there the much more speedy Golden Plovers mixed in. And far
away, along the water line, there is the endlessly fascinating view of
clouds of shorebirds whirling around in constantly changing patterns ,
like smoke. They are too far away to identify, but they clearly come in
two sizes, and must be Dunlins and Red Knots mainly---and there are
thousands of them, so that there may be three-four differently changing
smoke-clouds aloft at the same time. One never tires of watching them! A
local birder, who clearly knew his turf in detail, not only showed us
Roedeer among the cattle in the distance, but also the cause of much of
the constant panicking, a forceful looking Peregrine falcon sitting
watchfully on a low dike in the middle distance: it comes back every
winter, he told us. Definitely an area to come back many times!!
But time was up.and we had to separate and drive home. The last newcomers
on my year list were Moorhens and a Pochard, and with the Red-whiskered
Bulbul, that has lived in and around Riet's garden now for more than two
years already, my year list has jumped from 21 to 89 this weekend. That is
great, but the great memories of this weekend are not of species
diversity, but of numbers: great flocks of Barnacle Geese overhead, an
islet full of Oystercatchers and Curlews, patiently waiting for the ebb ,
and the ever changing whirling clouds of sandpipers over the Slikken van
Flakkee. Nature is truly great!!
Wim
Vader, Tromsoe Museum
9037
Tromsoe, Norway
PS I left Holland with 97 year birds
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