Goodbye spring, Hello winter!

The title of this post were exactly the words I was thinking of when I woke up this morning. It was windy, it was snowing and very cold! Last week we had a couple of very nice days with a temperature reaching to 16-17 degrees but that has changed dramatically. Above that, they're forecasting night temperatures of -8 coming week, and that in the middle of march!

Anyway, Tammo and I went to visit the Waxwings again, this time with snowy conditions, resulting in some better oppertunities. Nevertheless, it was difficult (for me) to get sharp pictures. Check out the result below. Together with a recording.

Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus)

Furthermore I did some photographing of the Siskins in our garden, which are still present. I saw up to 12 birds at the same time in our garden, at least two of them were ringed. The interactions between the individuals is great to see, you can watch them for hours:)

Siskin (Carduelis spinus), 2cy

Then around 14.00 we headed off to the IJssel near Deventer. Large groups of Golden Plovers had been seen here this morning. Golden Plover is a difficult bird to see in our county, so it is quite unusual to have over 600+ Golden Plovers in the county. We saw groups of 113, 10 and 9 birds. Furthermore there were lots of Lapwings present. Among the Lapwings and Golden Plovers, Redwings, Skylarks, Starlings and Fieldfares were foraging in the fields.

At the Yperenplas we saw 100+ Black-tailed Godwits, some Smews, Great White Egrets and some Snipes. At the Bolwerksweiden we had 2 Ringed Plovers, 9 Golden Plovers and 3 Dunlin, which was a little surprise during this cold day. Not a bad day!

Golden Plovers (Pluvialis apricaria); some of them were moulting into summer plumage already, with some black on the belly.