Searching for animals, all over the world: Duvenstedter Brook

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Duvenstedter Brook

The White-tailed Eagle from two perspectives

The best picture of the Middle Spotted Woodpecker. It was one of my most wished birds for this year...

The Tawny Owl sleeping in a chimney

On Sunday I woke up much earlier than normally, at 9AM, to go and visit the Duvenstedter Brook. It is Hamburgs second biggest conservation area and I had already visited it in September, when the only interesting sighting was a fox. This time I hoped for some other animals, hping for good mammals, as the reserve is known for its populations of Red and Fallow Deer, Wild Boar and other smaller mammals. But I didn't know what was expecting me.
Already on the way to the reserve I encountered a first for 2011. A pair of Jackdaws lingered on the metro-station. Then when I arrived at the final station I first headed to a cementary, where Tawny Owl had been reported the last few days. And I was lucky and got already my third owl species since I'm back from Ecuador. Tawny Owl had been the only owl I had seen before, but that was when I was about 5 or 6 years old. Other really cool birds on the cementary were a pair of Goldcrests and 3 Crested Tits. On my way to the actual reserve I passed by several lakes, where 10 Mergansers, 2 Goldeneyes and 14 Tufted Ducks swam on the water and a Grey Heron, 2 Cormorants, 3 Greylag Geese and 2 Whooper Swans sat beside it. Short after a group of 102 Greylag Geese flew over. As soon as I was in the Brook I was greeted by a Red Kite, but only got a very bad shot through the mist. Soon after I found two Ravens of which I would find 7 in total this day. In a woody patch I hoped to find Woodpecker and was rewarded... by a Middle Spotted Woodpecker!!! I hadn't really hoped for that one, but was really happy about it. The pictures I got were all taken against the light, eventhough I tried hard to get to an other place:(
In the same area were 3 Eurasian Woodcreepers, the rarer of the two Woodcreeper species. It seemed like every rare bird I could get would appear and so did 2 White-tailed Eagles swoop over the forest to land not too far away from me, but too far for really good pictures. Then I walked a long time through some quite beautiful scenery but without seeing any bird at all. When I finally arrived at the end of the trail I was surprised by a male Northern Harrier over a field searching for mice and other small animals. On my way back to the metro-station I saw a Willow Tit and ended this incredible birding trip without any mammal but with 37 bird species, 3 of them being totally new and 9 more new birds for 2011. WOW! This gets close to a birding trip in Ecuador...