Apples with snow, guaranteed succes

There's been snow for here the past 2/3 weeks and that means that lots of birds look for food in the cities. It's the ultimate time to have, amongst others, Fieldfares in your garden. Just put some apples out and you'll attract them soon. Every winter (when there's snow) we have a couple of Fieldfares in the garden, eating off the apples. There we some apples out in the garden but no Fieldfare showed up this week. This morning I put up the net but it was too windy and there were very few birds around. Then around 10 when I had to go to the city I was standing in the garden and suddenly three Fieldfares dropped, looking very hungry. They were really tame and were feeding only a few metres away from me. I had to go but when I would come back I would try to trap one! I put my cage out and put the apples in it. It took some time but eventually the Fieldfare found its way into the trap. Gotcha! My first Fieldfare I ring in the garden. The rest of the day I let them feed on the apples, since they're hungry! This one was a 2cy male, the other ones are an adult female and an adult male.

Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris), 2cy male

Other than that I haven't been doing to much bird watching. Last Sunday I went to visit the IJssel with my dad. It was pretty nice. 16 Whooper Swans, 2 Bewick's Swan, a Green Sandpiper and some other stuff. Here are some pic's.

 Green Sandpiper (Tringa ochropus)

Whooper Swans (Cygnus cygnus), IJssel near Deventer and Albaplas near Klarenbeek

Bewick's Swans (Cygnus bewickii), from two weeks ago near Deventer.

 A pair of Red-breasted Mergansers (Mergus serrator), has been present for almost two weeks now on the IJssel near Deventer. A very good county record!

The two images above were both taken by my dad, Tammo meijer.

Ducks, ducks, ducks

At the Yperenplas near Wilp some rare ducks for our county have been found a few days ago by Maarten Kaales (totalbirding.blogspot.com). On the big lake there he found a male Ferruginous Duck, a hybrid Ferruginous Duck X Pochard and a female Scaup. A pretty nice assembly in one group of ducks. They were discoveresd on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday I went there with Bram and Tammo. It didn't take long for us to find all three species there. According to Arno ten Hoeve there were even two hybrids present. So perhaps it's a hybrid family: father Ferruginous, mother Pochard and their two kids have visited our county :)

The light was horrible, but despite that I managed to get some recordshots of the ducks.

 Ferrigunous Duck (Aythya nyroca), male

Hybrid Ferrigunous Duck X Pochard (Aythya nyroca X ferina), male

Scaup (Aythya marila), female

Here are some landscape pics:

 Thousands of geese, mainly White-Fronted and Barnacle Geese have been present along the IJssel.

A view on the IJssel with Deventer as its background, flooded land as a result of high water levels (which is common in winter).

Yesterday morning I had two Redpolls spec. foraging together with a Siskin in an alder behind my garden. Everyday several groups of Siskins fly by, maybe some movement!