With Rob Crouch. Another great walk and as usual fun to meet other bird nerds, and great to be out in some lovely nature.

And we did not even notice the partial solar eclipse!

By the way, it has come to my attention that not all nature lovers in Berlin are aware of the Umweltkalender, so here it is again. Depending what you look for, there are filters, and I personally filter for “Führung” and then in Zielgruppe for “Erwachsene” – that weeds out a lot of activities in which I would not be particularly interested.

I will be out of Berlin the next couple of weekends, so the next event found in Umweltkalender which I will attend is this one in Wuhletal.

Some of VHS’s birdwatching events are listed in Umweltkalender, but unfortunately, in true, German IT-angst fashion, not all (and consistency is not Volkshochsschule’s Spitzenkompetenz in any case – VHS in each Bezirk seem to function as completely separate institutions that have nothing whatsoever to do with each other (???). For example, this one, to which I have signed up, is not in Umweltkalender: https://www.vhsit.berlin.de/VHSKURSE/BusinessPages/CourseDetail.aspx?id=712215, and I recently discovered one of Rob Crouch’s walks that is also not listed there, so if you want to stay in the loop, you unfortunately have to keep checking the VHS website which is still really heavy and time-consuming to navigate.

Back to this Saturdays’s walk: We saw many birds but unfortunately, I did not manage any particularly good photos. However, for purposes of identification, I am posting some here nonetheless.

On Moorlinse we saw a duck which on the spot we identified as a Pochard/Tafelente, and in ZickZack Graben a cute little thing which at first we thought was a kind of lark, then when seeing it in-camera some kind of warbler, but on seeing the photo enlarged, Agata suggests it might be a Blackthroat/Schwarzkehlschen. Walking along, we then saw cranes, herons and geese (as well as several birds of prey hovering over the trees at the edge too far away to be photographed).

We also witnessed, from a great distance, a bird being mobbed by a crow. This would normally happen to a bird of prey, and was initially identified as a Hen Harrier, or some other Harrier, alternatively as a Kiebitz (but do crows usually harrass birds other than birds of prey?). The photos are terrible, and the answer is blowing in the wind, but somebody in my trusty Facebook group on birds in Berlin says that the bird on the second photos is definitely a Kiebitz. If anybody sees this and has comments, they are welcome in an e-mail to me here.

In the forest on the other side of the road, after the lunch break, we saw traces of beaver, but of course no beavers in the middle of the day. We would need to come back at dawn or at dusk (and then still not be able to see those shy and elusive buggers). But there was one piece of some kind of cattle – sometimes there are many more of them – perhaps as from April.

Also a couple of Mallards/Stock Ente:

The following is a series of photos of a Nuthatch/Kleiber we saw moving in and out of what is probably his lodgings for the season, and yes, I know, they are quite common, and I already have hundreds of photos of them, but this one was too cute not to photograph.

Moving on to Bogensee, where I had hoped to see the Great White Egret, instead we saw a heron preparing to move in for the kill, and some ducks which we think might be Teals/Krickente.

Other photos taken along the way:

And finally, my favourite subject – the obligatory trees in black&white: