A day on the bicycle…
There's a particular kind of joy in birding your local patch — the kind where you know exactly which hide has the dodgy hinge, exactly where the path turns to soup after rain, and exactly how many minutes you can dawdle at breakfast before you miss the morning light. Today, Klydesøen decided to reward that loyalty in spectacular fashion, as is often the case at this time of year. The plan was simple: bicycle, visit the three towers and the hide in the middle of the reserve. The result after 5 hours was 73 species, including four adult White-tailed Eagles, and a wader lineup that honestly deserves its own opening act at a music festival.
Let's start with the headline act. Four adult white-tailed eagles seen within half-an-hour is not a "check the bins are focused right" moment, it's a "sit down on the nearest log and just watch" and admire the moment. Europe's largest eagle, built like a flying barn door, and somehow four of them decided to share the same stretch of sky over Klydesøen today. Waders scattered, ducks and gulls panicked, and one very smug birder pedalled home significantly later than planned.
If the eagles were the headliners, the waders were an absolutely stacked supporting lineup — no less than 23 species, and I even dipped on a couple I should have seen.
The classics:
Pied Avocet — sweeping that upturned bill through the shallows like it's conducting an orchestra nobody else can hear.
Bar-tailed Godwits & Black-tailed Godwits — together, a genuinely satisfying "spot the difference" exercise if you like that sort of self-inflicted homework.
Common, Green, and Wood Sandpipers — the trio that will absolutely humble anyone who says "oh, sandpipers are all the same really."
The “shank” trifecta:
Common Redshank, Spotted Redshank & Common Greenshank — three species, three sets of legs, three separate opportunities to second-guess yourself in the field.
The tundra crew:
Ruddy Turnstone, Red Knot, and Sanderling — passage migrants doing what passage migrants do best: turning up, looking smart, and reminding you that half the fun of autumn wader-watching is knowing they're only stopping by.
And then, the stars of the show:
Broad-billed sandpiper — small, stripy-headed, easy to walk straight past if you're not paying attention, and always, always worth the neck cramp from staring at the mud for twenty minutes to confirm; and Curlew Sandpiper — that gentle downcurved bill and warm blush of colour make it one of the more elegant waders to pass through, and finding one feels like the reserve quietly rewarding you for showing up on the right day.
The final numbers:
73 species. Four hides. One bicycle. Zero regrets, aside from possibly my legs tomorrow.
Due to the trips I lead as well as many other distractions, I get very few days to bird on my own, and days like this are exactly why local patch birding never gets old — I am lucky to live close to such a diverse area for the majority of the year, today produced a very good list, and I am sure the same will be the case for the next many weeks. I missed a few waders today as well as a lot of common species, however, that is the joy of birding, you just never know…..until next time