Asio flammeus

My dad and I made a trip this morning to Zeeland, to see if we could see some cool birds. On the weather forecast we heard that there would be some fog this morning but that it would clear after a couple of hours. The entire drive to Zeeland we were covered in fog. We arrived at Colijnsplaat around 10.00, for the Greater Yellowlegs that already has been present for over a year now. But because of the dense fog, we weren't able to locate the bird... We decided to continue on, in the hope of seeing other interesting species. As we drove on, we saw that the fog had cleared a little and for a while, from 11.00 till 14.00, we had a view of 500-1000 metre, a lot better! During these hours we had incredible views of four hunting Short-eared Owls. I'd never seen them this well before. Two of them were hunting next to the dike, where the grass had just been mowed, which meant there were a lot of small rodents present. On the other side, down the insert, there were three other birds hunting. Some of them coming by really close. A couple of times they were mobbing a perched Buzzard and a couple of times we could see them mobbing each other. While mobbing the Buzzard they made a call, reminding me of a calling Snipe. Next to the owls, we saw about 4 Horned Grebe's, quite a few Red-breasted Mergansers, 2 Peregrines, a Spotted Redshank, 2 Water Rails and lots of geese.

Just a few I picked out!

The one clear moment we had today. The rest of today was.......:

That's right, fog..

We ended the day accordingly, with a meal at the BurgerKing.