Sunday 28 August 2011

Vestamager

Yesterday I joined the Copenhagen birding group at a natural area just outside of the city core - I had heard of this place being very good for migrants and shorebirds. I expected it to be similar to Leslie Street Spit in Toronto because of its proximity to a large city. I was mistaken - this place was much better! It has already topped most if not all birding locations I've been to in Canada - except James Bay! Although, that may be because everything is new so I am easily excited.

But I've yet to see anything compete with thousands and thousands of European Golden-Plovers and Lapwings in the fields, mudflats and in the sky! I don't think I've ever actually seen shorebirds fly in a V-formation, but here it seemed to be the prevalent flight formation.

yeah, I didn't take many photos - let alone good ones(yet)!

To give an idea of what the area looks like (after a 10 minute rainstorm passed by and the sun came out):

99% of it is grassland/meadows... a small marsh yielded a hard to find Bittern. And along the coast is where another marshy/muddy area is - and where the shorebirds are.
This place is actually much larger than I expected it to be. A bike is almost necessary to be able to get to all the hotspots!

My highlights from the day were the EU Golden-Plovers, hearing Curlews and then finally seeing one (sort of like a very large Whimbrel with a longer and more curved bill - Long-billed Curlew-like I suppose) and pretty good looks at about 10 Ruff :)

A big thank you to David Collinge for taking the time to show me the area and helping me out with ID'ing the birds!

By the end of the day I had 49 lifers since arriving in DK and 70 birds on my DK list! Thank you eBird for being so user friendly!
Today I went to a beach called "Olsemagle Revle" that was equally as good - actually I saw 12 species of shorebird today and 'only' 11 yesterday :p with a total of 18 over the two days :-D
I'll write about that tomorrow.

In the near future I'll probably visit my local park again in search for Black Woodpecker (similar to the Pileated Woodpecker in North America but all black with a red crown) and possibly Sweden next weekend!