Texel

As I am sure that the whole world knows a Spectacled Eider somehow pitched up in Holland back in January. It was big news, a record of extreme bonkersness. How could a bird that doesn't leave the Arctic Circle arrive in Europe? How could a bird that is so difficult to see on its breeding grounds in Alaska and simply impossible to see in winter be bobbing about off a sea wall on Texel? I remarked upon all of this at the time and then put it to the back of my mind. I am not a Western Palearctic twitcher and what is more I was absurdly busy, too busy to drop everything and go to Holland. I proceeded with Plan A. And simultaneously Plans B, C, D & E....

The bird had been present for a month before Bradders called. To be fair he'd floated the idea of a weekend on Texel at the end of January but as I'd said I was out of the game until late February I'd assumed he would have gone already. But he hadn't, and he had also cleverly remembered that my next free weekend was the 22nd February. Was I still free he enquired? Well yes, I was. But I will tell you now that having yet another weekend away was the very last thing I wanted at that particular moment in time. Putting common sense, reason and matrimonial harmony to one side I said yes immediately.

Plans were put into action, ferry tickets were booked, electric vehicle charging locations were pinpointed (a whole new game). After work on Friday I took a train out to Colchester, and from there was electrically chauffeured to Harwich and onto one of the largest ferries I'd ever seen, and what seemed like a few moments later we arrived at the Hook of Holland. I've never slept so well on a boat, the Shetland ferries feel like tubs in comparison. I couldn't even feel the engine vibrations and slept like a baby the whole way across. 

Part of my motivation for coming on this little outing was that my only other Eurotwitch, also to Holland and also with Bradders, had been before eBird. As such I'd had to recreate historical lists based on photographs and blog posts which tend not to feature iconic birds like Dunnocks and Starlings. Returning armed, as it were, would make up for this grave 2016 oversight and as such I was out on deck with the app running as the ship came into dock. I added nothing.

With the required charging break we made it to the Den Helder ferry for the 11.30am sailing and were on Texel for midday. It was a short drive north to the relevant sea wall and shortly afterwards we were watching 'the boy'. When the Spectacled Eider first turned up the scenes from Texel were extraordinary. I was sent a video with no context, all I saw were more birders in one place than I have ever seen before. It turned out to be all of Europe's twitchers descending on Texel on the first available weekend. Bradders and I had played it very cool indeed and consequently we ended up watching it with perhaps six other people. It was reasonably distant so we were unlucky on that front, but through the scope the views were fine. As you can see from my photograph it was possibly slightly out of range for my camera..... It seemed in fine fettle, though, associating with a small flock of Common Eider, diving and preening and generally being very Eider-y. I love it when a plan comes together.

Spectacled Eider

The only slight wrinkle in the plan was the deteriorating weather. It was looking very gloomy indeed, one of those days where dusk arrives at about 2pm and refuses to leave. We made the best of it, birding the flat landscape and enjoying the quite ridiculous numbers of geese - Barnacles, Greater White-fronts, Brents and Greylags. And of course adding to our burgeoning Netherlands life lists with various waders, ducks and passerines. Eventually however we had to admit defeat, the weather was unpleasant and unbirdable, and we decided to leave Texel and head back south. We made a short stop at a canal near the Amstelmeer which had at a minimum 24 Smew in it, itself remarkable given how you rarely see more than one in the UK and that's if you make an effort. A little further south at Alkmaar we then dipped Baikal Teal and Ring-necked Duck. Nevermind, out of the three rare ducks we felt had dipped the correct ones.

The next day the weather was much improved, not yet wonderful, but significantly better. Birdable better. We were staying in Almere and with listing very much in mind headed off to some local woodland to see what we might find. I say listing, what I really meant was cool Woodpeckers that are not found in the UK, namely Middle-spotted and Black Woodpecker. We found both of these at the very lovely Goois Natuurreservaat Spanderswoud along with clouds of Siskin, Brambling and Chaffinch. If you have not seen one let me put it on record that Black Woodpeckers are sensational. For starters they are enormous. And very black. And very loud. Once we had heard it call it did not take us long to track it down. 

The rest of the day was spent alternating between Natuurpark Lelystad and the Oostvaarderplassen. The former hosted an extremely mobile and irritating Pygmy Cormorant, hence the alternating. Not an impressive bird but a very rare one this far west. We eventually got it at our second attempt having missed it by a matter of minutes several times during our first visit. I wonder if one will ever make it as far as the UK?

The latter was an immense gathering of geese and a scattering of eagles. Generally the geese did the gathering and the Eagles took care of the scattering. This was far more satisfying than chasing a small Cormorant around a series of small lakes, mind-bogglingly so actually, with vast numbers of wildfowl and waders. In addition to several White-tailed Eagle we were also treated to a fly-through Goshawk, a Hen Harrier, several Kestrels and a Marsh Harrier. Both wild Swans were present, as well as Spoonbill, and a short distance away were Scaup, Lesser Scaup, Goosander and a Jack Snipe. Excellent birding, and we spent until dusk here before heading back for the Sunday evening sailing to Harwich.

A small fraction of the geese present

So that was the weekend that ideally I would have spent at home. I am glad I went though, winter birding in The Netherlands is fantastic and that is also likely my only chance at Spectacled Eider. And it is only a couple of days, any angst I might have felt at the time is long gone, and I'm largely caught up on almost all of things I postponed. And as you already know I did subsequently manage a day at home the following weekend. Yay! But only after I'd been to France for a day....

A decadent lunch in Rotterdam

I had some time to kill last week - not able to go back to work after Brazil as I needed to complete a mandatory ten days away from the office I was at rather a loose end. Unable to face local birding and not wanting to just mooch around the house doing long-postponed jobs, quite last minute I booked a day trip to Holland to go birding. I identified a few decent looking spots around Rotterdam that I could get to on foot from the airport, packed what's left of my bins (major rubber armour flaking issues), and set off early on Tuesday morning. 

The weather had other ideas, and on arrival in Rotterdam it was overcast and extremely breezy, with intensely heavy and thundery storms in the vicinity. Being out in the wilds in these conditions seemed like a bad idea so I elected to instead stay in town and within a short dash of cover. After a little bit of birding at Het Park down at the Nieuwe Maas,(Kingfisher and Short-toed Treecreeper the highlights, a million Egyptian Geese the lowlights), and a nice walk around sections of the massive harbour, I then ambled along to the Witte de Withstraat. Very peculiar coffee shops.... Then I went and had lunch nearby as the clouds gathered. A lengthy lunch. Quite decadent in fact, and made even better by the fact that the promised rain did indeed materialise, was as heavy as forecast, and I was right next to the window looking out at it rather than being stuck in it.

Now I've never done a post like this before so I'm viewing this as a bit of a test. I suspect it's rather a niche subject matter, but you know how it is on this blog. If the thought of gratuitous travel and expensive restaurants doesn't appeal for any reason then just skip it. Anyway, as regular readers will be aware wine is a major interest of mine. It always has been to some extent, but it found new prominence during the various pandemic lockdowns as other interests were forced to wane. Since then I've kept it up quite intensely, and these days I probably spend as much if not more time thinking about wine than I do about birds, photography, plants, travel. Possibly combined. When I eventually retire I will not be short of things to do. Nor things to drink.

I found a restaurant with rather a specialist wine list called Vineum, and it being Tuesday lunchtime there was tons of space. Excellent. I was one of only three covers, which combined with an extremely attentive and knowledgeable member of staff made for a superb experience.

Already looking promising

I had the four course menu for 55 euros which was fantastic value and really good. Although the wine list was monumental and glorious I opted to go for wines by the glass as they had a relatively good selection. I started with some Champagne, after all why not, I was on holiday.

Champagne

Amuse Bouches. Can't remember what they were I'm afraid! But I enjoyed them with the Champagne.

Young mackeral ceviche, leche de tiger with passion fruit, jalapeno, avocado creme. This was as good as it looks, with the tart yet sweet passion fruit coulis in the middle proving an excellent foil to the slippery and highly fresh fish. I don't recall the pepper making much of a mark. One of those pairing combinations that you would never in a million years think of yourself, nor attempt to make at home. This is why restaurants exist.

NV Egly-Ouriet Champagne Premier Cru Les Vignes de Vrigny - France, Champagne, Champagne Premier Cru
Medium gold in colour. Instant champagne hit, nutty, bready and rich. Fantastic balance marks this out, supremely easy to sip and contemplate. Fine mousse, stone fruit, cake and pastry, stewed apple and a lovely lemony acidity that keeps it all in check. Although you can sense some age it does not stand out. Base 2019, disgorged July 2023.

Whites

Continuation with the ceviche and then onto:
Tagliatelle with fresh truffle, cream, rocket cress and parmesan. Fabulous. This is apparently their signature dish and I can tell why. Normally I dislike truffle, it's a bit like when something is smoked - it seems not to matter what that something is, it just tastes like all other smoked things. This however was excellent, just the right amount of truffle taste, not over-powering. It must be the fresh ingredient, rather than a chemically produced one which is all too prevalent. Pasta nicely al dente, and a good ratio of sauce. My one minor gripe was that it was rather difficult to eat, with some sections of the pasta a bit fused together and coming apart in lumps. Then again I was sat by myself, in a corner, and so a small amount of inelegance went unseen.

2020 Sylvain Dussort Meursault Vieilles Vignes - France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Meursault
Light yellow. Small amount of reduction and smoke on the nose, dissipates to leave quite a mineral and chalky Meursault that is in a linear rather than fatty style. Nice clean burgundy, totally hits the spot, but at the same time doesn't scream Meursault. Depends what you want I suppose, and good wine nonetheless. Coravin pour.

2022 Schloss Lieser Riesling Trocken SL - Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer
Light yellow. Fruity nose, whiffs of petrol after a swish, hints of pineapple. Wonderful freshness, the merest hints of sucrosity. For a base-level Mosel Riesling this is really good, and when you see the price you will be astonished. 

Reds

Sautees magret de canard with candied leeks, rosti with epoisses creme and sauce of figs and balsamic vinegar. Ooof, now this is food. The duck was OK, well executed but but not spectacular, but the rosti with epoisses taken with a small amount of fresh fig, wow. Just exceptional. You could almost see the calories mounting up as you ate each morsel. Good match for the in some cases rather strident wines.

A selection of 5 cheeses. I'm afraid I cannot now precisely recall what these were, possibly the lunch was a little too decadent... I remeber I had to eat them left to right, essentially in order of strength and with the blue at the end. Pretty sure #2 was a local young cheese, and that #3 was a Tomme, but that's it. All were delicious, though the blue was actually quite mild by my palate. I was not a huge fan of the matching condiments, I tend to like cheese by itself but I gamely gave each one a go just to see what they added.

2021 Jérôme Chezeaux Bourgogne - France, Burgundy, Bourgogne
Medium red. Good earthen quality to the nose, not deep and musty but definitely present and correct. Red and black fruit on the palate, there is a nice amount of acidic zip here and whilst this isn't an outstanding entry level BR it is very nicely done. I didn't know the producer but was pleasantly surprised as was not expecting much from the vintage. This is a decent bottle of Bourgogne with the right amount of sense of place for the price.

2018 Domaine de Ferrand Côtes du Rhône Mistral - France, Rhône, Southern Rhône, Côtes du Rhône
Medium red. Quite olivey and gamey on the nose, dark fruited in nature but with lighter flashes. Astringent tannic core with more acidity than I was expecting and tough without food - definitely not in the sipping style for my tastes. However transformed as an accompaniment to magret de canard where this cuts through the fat.

2022 Le Chiuse Rosso di Montalcino - Italy, Tuscany, Montalcino, Rosso di Montalcino
Medium red. A lighter style of Sangiovese and very approachable despite its youth - designed no doubt for early drinking. Ripe soft fruit with sweet overtones, herbs and some grit. Very nice with or without food.

 

To close

2022 Schloss Lieser Piesporter Goldtröpfchen Riesling Kabinett - Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer
Intensely clean and fruity, just a brief impression as a small taste and I was on my way out. You could drink it more or less forever was my quick view. Super-fresh as you would expect. A nice parting gift.

Well what a fantastic discovery this place was. None of the wines I had by the glass were standout other than the Champagne, but I wasn't particularly expecting them to be. What mattered was they were universally decent, went well with the varied food and were reasonbly priced. I could have just about stretched to a bottle off the stupendous list, but decided that I'd prefer pairings for the variety. The list was enormous, pages and pages, filled with gems and with a real focus on Burgundy - a page from the Cote-de-Nuits shown below. There were so many bottles I would have loved to have tried but they were almost all beyond my means - restaurant markups are totally understandable but at the same time they make me very sad. This is why I am hugely grateful for the concept of corkage and am more than happy to pay what might seem like a lot of money to be able to bring something from my own cellar. I have a list of restaurants in London that allow this and that I visit regularly as a result.

Vineum uses Spiegelau Definition glassware which is what I use at home. They're excellent, basically 90% of a Zalto glass for about a third of the price. Lovely to drink from, but not a total disaster if you break one. You can see their Burgundy glass in one of the photos above. I had a fresh glass for every wine, and sometimes had several on the table at once - this is one of the markers of this being a place for wine lovers, and if I lived in the city it would definitely be a regular haunt. As it was not busy there was plenty of time to talk about the wines in depth with the guy running the floor, and I was treated very well with even a couple of extra tastes of things. I would go back in a heartbeat next time I am there. In fact I might travel specifically to go there...

After lunch I went shopping for cheese and then did a bit more birding near the airport, ending up with a day list of 36. Not bad for a three hour lunch....

Glad to be indoors looking out!

Whilst in Holland

Rather than a smash and grab raid for the Rubythroat, Bradders and I stayed overnight and devoted the second day to birding in Holland. Largely this involved twitching a few long-staying rarities that were nearby, as well as exploring a number of sites in the north of the country. Neither of us had birded in Holland before, indeed this was a country tick for DB to boot, and we were both bowled over by the quality of the habitats that we visited. Waterfowl and Gulls in particular were ridiculously abundant, more so than in any place I have ever visited. Driving along any road you were assured of a constant stream of interest. Luckily Bradders was driving or we would have ended up in about a dozen canals.

We had left London at around 4.30am, and were in Northern France by 8.30am (with the one hour time difference). The tunnel is incredibly easy and efficient. Despite the recent atrocities in Belgium there was no sign of any type of border control or check. I had wondered if travelling so soon afterwards might have been a bad plan, but we cruised through with no issues whatsoever and I am thus here to tell the tale of a wonderful weekend. We did a spot of shopping for provisions near Antwerp, negotiated a massive jam in Amsterdam, and arrived at Hoogwoud just after 2pm. We had the bird to ourselves at first, but before it showed properly we were joined by a minibus full of Dutch twitchers, showing that this bird remains as popular as ever two months on from its arrival. This mass of people probably contributed to the bird remaining extensively hidden for a period of time, but when they departed I gathered up the mealworms they had randomly scattered and put them somewhere more suitable. Soon the bird popped out, scoffing a few before taking one particularly juicy one back into the undergrowth. This next photo is principally for Mick S who loves a good mealworm photo, but also to show that this bird is getting fed and regularly so, such that it may stay for some time yet. 

Top drawer I'm sure you'll agree!

With the light beginning to go, we drove the short distance north to Den Oever for a Lesser Scaup, which DB picked up with ease across the lagoon. The weather was worsening by the minute, the wind really getting up, and we agreed that our timing for the Rubythroat had been spot on. The next day looked very inclement indeed, we weren't sure how much birding we might actually get.

Retracing our steps to Alkmaar we had a superb dinner in the old town. If you find yourself there I can heartily recommend a restaurant called simply "Steak", and don't even think about having anything else. Or at least that was the message from the very convivial Fred who was running the place. As well as great food, our candlelit celebratory dinner also involved beer. Excellent beer. Supremely good beer. Beer so good I gave regular thanks that I wasn't driving... DId you know Alkmaar also has a world-famous Cheese Market? I am betting that you didn't, neither did I until I googled it. It being the evening of Easter Saturday it was closed, but I mention it on the offchance that you can make use of this snippet of culinary information. I am a fan of cheese, and so as the next best thing I popped into a supermarket (the only supermarket in the country that does not take credit cards of any description) and grabbed a couple of slabs as a reminder of my time here, and in the hope of adding to the heady aroma already developing in the braddersmobile following the shopping expedition in Belgium.

Up early the next morning and back to Den Oever where we had apparently missed a drake Bufflehead the previous day. Soon put that right but five minutes later and it would have flown out to sea and we would have missed it - a smart duck, but where has it come from? A box? Or somewhere further away? A birder we met at Hoogwoud was pretty dismissive, but wildfowl is notoriously difficult to assign. Top bird nonetheless, and as it was sitting a hundred metres out to sea ignored all the bread I threw at it.

Next stop some wonderful habitat near Zaandam, the Engewormer and Widjewormer. Ducks everywhere, displaying Godwits, birdy goodness in other words. A showy Scaup was recompense for a dipped Ring-necked Duck, but I'd have rather seen the former given my recent experience in Arizona. A short distance away a Lesser White-fronted Goose with rings indicating it was from the reintroduction program behaved very badly with a Greylag Goose. Baffling and an indication that a bird's behaviour is not necessarily a guide to its provenance.

Disgracing itself?

We needed to back in Calais for about 8pm, and had one final area pencilled in, the Biesbosch, south-east of Rotterdam. This has had a number of decent birds recently that indicated promise for an exploratory session. We failed to see some Penduline Tits in high winds, and then came across a Red-breasted Goose in a huge flock of Barnies looking absolutely pukka. Turns out it has a purple ring on it and it is almost certainly duff. Go figure.
The Biesbosch is wonderful. Superbly named, it has a network of raised roads wiggling through stellar habitat and is stuffed full of birds. We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking it all in, working on the trip list and generally feeling good about birding. Very windy, but we saw a lot of good stuff despite this - Smew, singing Willow Tit, Water Pipit, Marsh Harrier to name a few.

Clearly plastic....

Favourite Goose

Waterpieper

As usual I helped Bradders negotiate a long and tricky drive by falling asleep several times in the passenger seat, and so just a short while later we arrived in Calais where I managed to blurt out enough french to blag us onto an earlier crossing. Merci. Storm Katie was beginning to make itself known and so the drive back was rather grim. Naturally I stayed awake for it. Final scores on the doors something like 83 species, including a variety of rare wildfowl that it are seemingly impossible to call. Shoot them and isotope them I say.

Snuffi nearly got eaten by a dog whilst posing for this