Rough-legged Buzzard!

When the new year starts, the new yearlist starts all over again as well.

My parents planned to go for a walk today but I was hesitating if I should go with them, because I still had some homework to do. In the end I decided to come along, and this was a good decision because there were plenty of birds to be seen along the IJssel. We already saw a Great-grey shrike along our way, perched in a small tree, just a few hundred metres before our destination.We parked our car at the Rammelwaard, near Zuthpen and walked on the dike. I noticed many geese flying by. All probably very happy that they could forage on the unfrozen farmlands again. The first bird I saw was a nice swimming male Goosander. It was not really shy and I could take a few shots.

Then we continued our walk on the dike and we had some wonderful oppertunities to photograph several species of geese:

White-fronted geese

And several Tundra bean Geese

Along with a few Barnacle geese

This was the first time ever, that I saw that many geese passing our heads that closely! Moreover, the bean geese I normally see in our region, are very distant, but these birds today were very close-by!

We also oberved 7 Whooper swans, a 1st winter Goshawk, 2 Great White egrets and the usual winter birds.

When we got back at the car we decided to go to Slot Nijenbeek, because we saw plenty of geese activity there as well. Arriving there, thousands of White-fronts were foraging on some farmland next to the road. I checked the group quickly with my binoculars but could not find anything special, I regretted the fact that we did not bring our telescope. Moments later I suddenly saw a raptor flying at quite a large distance. The first thing I thought was Hen harrier, because of the harrier-like flight. Then I saw a white tail combined with a black terminalband. This could only be one species: Rough-legged buzzard!  It was distant but it was showing quite well. I quickly grabbed my camera to take of few recordshots. The results can be seen below.

This was good start of the new year: