Weekend Birds (1 Viewer)

Was in Bonn at my girlfriends place ( at the moment we are unlucky enough not to live together-its the jobs);
On saturday we where shopping, but the morning started nicely with a hawfinch seen from the backyard window, together with the usual lot of Blue and Great tit, house sparrow, magpie, black crow, robin, blackbird, greenfinch.

On sunday we where in a nature protection area at the mouth of the river Sieg , slightly north of Bonn. We saw:
Greylag goose
Egyptian goose
Mallard
Mute swan
Goshawk
Peregrine
Kestrel
Common Buzzard
Blackbird
Robin
Kingfisher
Blackheaded gull
Common gull
Ringnecked parakeet
great pied woodpecker
little grebe
Blue tit
Great tit
wood pigeon
chaffinch
nuthatch
jay
black crow
cormorant
goldfinch
winter wren
Starling

and we only heard

green woodpecker

Neither magpies nor Redwings though (The weeks before we had lots of redwings everywhere-many more than you normally see...)

Moin moin Joern

It must always be nice to see a Hawfinch, a great bird in my opinion and one that I've only seen once (in Iceland of all places!), and I've never seen Goshawk so I perhaps should visit Bonn soon!

E

Moin Moin Edward
Well, no problem there;
I could show you some nice places and birds,
peregrines for sure (do they nest in Iceland?), with goshawk it is more difficult and usually you have to be a little bit more lucky due to their secretive nature. Allthough in recent years they are a lot less secretive due to loosing some of their fear of humans (they are protected and illegal shooting seems to have decreased also). In the City Parks and woods of nearby (and much bigger) Cologne there are about 12 pairs now...
But still we see peregrines more often allthough there are much less breeding pairs (4 in cologne I think, and 2 pairs in the area of Bonn), ..well, they live in the open...
Two weeks ago we had a beautiful adult female peregrine plucking and eating a wood pigeon.
And there are many stock doves in that area, breeding in rabbit holes at the edges of the sand and gravel pits...

With me it is the other way round :I always missed gyr falcon so far (I really should visit Iceland), allthough, if one is lucky it is possible to see one in winter somewhere at the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein

Hawfinches are also a great sight, I fully agree. ..But do avoid to be bitten by a hawfinch; a guy i knew experienced that during ringing...ouch!

Jörn

Forgive my ignorance...but is "Great Pied Woodpecker" the same as Greater Spotted?

Moin Joern,

We don't have Peregrines in Iceland (only a rare vagrant) but I've been lucky enough to see them in Turkey and Spain. But we have Gyr Falcons instead and they can usually be seen on a trip to Iceland, especially around Reykjavík in winter and the Mývatn area in summer. Goshawk is one of my main target species every time I go to Britain but as you say they are difficult and I've missed them in Holland (und Ostholstein auch noch!).
Good luck finding Gyrs in Schleswig-Holstein this winter!

E

PS Seb seb, Joern means Great Spotted by Great Pied Woodpecker.

Seb seb,

Thats true , it is greater spotted woodpecker

sometimes I just mix the names as English not my mother language

Moin Edward,

Forgot to mention that we had a goshawk also the weekend before, in the Nature protection area "Wahner Heide". There were also some other good birds like water rail (only heard) and Middle Spotted Woodpecker.

So please tell one of your Gyrs to go south and I will try to convince a Goshawk that Iceland is actually a nice place ...or if you come to Germany, i ll really do my best to find you a goshawk... well, sparrowhawk is much easier... had one on my way to work yesterday, scaring the feral pigeons...

Jörn