Yesterday I showed you what we saw on the first half of our walk. Now I am going to show you what we saw on the second half.
When we finally got on top of the dyke (we had been walking on the lower part on the water side), it was really clear how much the dyke is important. The water level was higher than the land! The house you can see on the right in the photo would be below water if that dyke had not been there.
We followed the path down and arrived in a nature reserve where there were lots of different animals. Well, birds really. Although there were also a lot of hares. Which meant we had to stop again so Mara could change the lens on her camera. Again!
Of course, once she had changed the lens, the hares had moved away a bit. But, with the big lens, she was able to catch a couple anyway. And they were really big. I saw one hopping as well, and it was quite funny to see as his front legs are a bit shorter than his back legs.
But the best photos were yet to come: birds. I had never seen any of them before and Mara got very excited as well. The first one we saw was completely unknown to us, but we didn't think it was a sparrow, so Mara took several photos of it. When we got home, we checked it out and we found out it was a Meadow Pipit (graspieper).
The next bird we saw we knew to be a duck, but we had never seen it before in our lives. But according to the 'Vogelbescherming' (Society for the Protection of Birds) it was a Common Shelduck (bergeend) and quite common. I loved the band on its chest, which really stood out.
On we walked and then we got to see a Pied Avocet (kluut). Something we had heard of, but never seen. It's not that easy to see in the photo, but its bill is turned up at the end and it is a wader. It is white with lovely black stripes along its body.
We were both enjoying this bit of the walk every bit as the first bit and somebody else was excited as well as it sang and sang and sang. Not sure what it was though. I asked, but it just sang.
But the last bird we saw had Mara nearly jumping up and down for joy. She recognised it immediately and took quite a few photos of it. I give you: the Eurasian Spoonbill (lepelaar, natuurlijk). Our favourite.
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| This was really the last bird: the Common Whitethroat (grasmus) |
After that, the nature reserve came to an end for us and we were headed into the town of Zierikzee. Which I will tell you about tomorrow!
This isn't twitter but there was a lot of tweeting anyway. :)
ReplyDeleteHari Om
ReplyDeleteMy word Brom-bear, you have become a twitcher! Well done to Mara, too, for managing to capture these darlings in her lens. I am pawtikularly jelly green about the avocet - a bird I have never seen in the feather myself!!! Cirkey though, I am not sure I could ever live below sea level like that. Hugs and growlies, YAM-aunty xxx
Not a twitcher as such I think. But I do like seeing birds.
DeleteWhere I used to live before, I lived on the bottom of the sea and even now I am not that far above it. It's just what it is, I never think about it.
Brom I'm jumping with Mara....what a sighting to see the Spoonbill. I like the pop of red on the duck too
ReplyDeleteHugs Cecilia
You found lots of cool birds to show us. We love learning about nature from far off lands.
ReplyDeleteWhat beautiful nature you saw on the second half of your walk, Brom!!
ReplyDeleteWow. The dykes are so very important for that area. What fun to find all the birds. Be sure to tell Mara she did a really good job with the different lens. klem
ReplyDeleteThe dykes are important to the whole country. No dykes would mean 1/3 to 1/2 of the country being under water. That goes for both sea and river dykes.
DeleteWhat a nice day you had for your walk. I see the blue sky. The birds are awesome and I especially like the photo of the bird on the fence post. We have bunnies in our yard everyday. I've been giving them organic carrots.
ReplyDelete