Unusual Common Starling roost @ Noordwijk aan Zee (February 27 2025)

Spoiler alert (since a six minute video is already too much for most people nowadays): about 10.000 starlings go to sleep under the solar panels mounted on both sides of the roof of the former church.

The entire show (48+ minutes):

New Andorinha article

https://academic.oup.com/cz/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cz/zoab053/6325085?login=true

Andorinhas return to the streets of Aveiro

September 29, 2017: 38 birds present at the known roost site in the PM. As if they never left. Discovered there by Davina & Daniel, on a big night out...

153 Andorinhas by night...

Hirundo rustica. Vera Cruz, Aveiro, Portugal. December 14, 2016, 22:05h. 10°C, partly cloudy.

Andorinhas return

Aveiro, Portugal, October 16, 2016, 20:30.

Garden netting in Zwolle and more of the same Ring-necked Parakeets in Amsterdam, The Netherlands (January 19)

Coal Tit Periparus ater

On January 19 my friends and colleagues Jan van Dijk and Reinier Smabers visited me and the garden in which I grew up. This garden is located in a green suburb to the north of Zwolle, The Netherlands. I’ve been the ecological caretaker for it for many years. Due to the current high temperatures in this country, the majority of the wintering birds has not yet arrived. Bird’s, however, are always abundant in this garden (and fed regularly) and they were the reason that my guests brought 48 meters of mist nets...

Between 8:30 am and 1:00 pm we caught 77 birds. The following 76 were ringed, measured and released:

Long-tailed Tit Aegithalos caudatus  (2)

Eurasian Wren Troglodytes troglodytes   (1)

Short-toed Treecreeper Certhia brachydactyla  (1)

Eurasian Blue Tit Cyanistes caeruleus (37)

Great Tit Parus major (12)

Dunnock Prunella modularis (3)

European Robin Erithacus rubecula  (1)

Coal Tit Periparus ater (1)

Eurasian Tree Sparrow Passer montanus  (9)

Common Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs  (5)

Common Blackbird Turdus merula (4)

We caught one bird that was already ringed. This immature Eurasian Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus was ringed on June 20 2013, as a pullus on a nest located about 4 kilometers from the garden, on the south side of the city, by Jan himself.

 

In the afternoon I travelled to Amsterdam, in order to participate in a national count of roosting Ring-necked Parakeets that was being held this same day. The parakeets at a roost site in Amsterdam North (which I’ve regularly counted the past few years) also have to deal with the presence of raptors, often resulting in mass disturbance, making it difficult to count the birds. Fortunately the raptors remained quiet last night and the evening resulted in an easy count of 680 Ring-necked Parakeets (no idea yet how many were counted in the rest of the city or country this evening).

Winter in the tropics; Amsterdam, January 19 & 20

Last weekend I spent a lot of time in a cold and snowy park in Amsterdam North, in order to find out how many Ring-necked Parakeets currently roost in the northern part of the city. Sunday’s count was part of a national count, the second for this winter, but I figured it would be smart to find out what to expect and conduct an extra count the night before the official count, as I always prefer to do.

On Saturday I counted 823 birds in a relatively compact group, divided over five trees. The following day, when I was joined by Ruud Vlek, the moment of the bird’s arrival to the roost site (at dusk) coincided with a snow storm. Thankfully, it was not as cold as the previous day and, when not facing the direction of the wind, we still managed to conduct a proper count. Unfortunately, a large number of parakeets decided not to fight the storm and these slept elsewhere, probably closer to their foraging areas (although that same night a keen observer noted elsewhere that at least one parakeet decided to roost in a nest hole). Ruud and I counted only 270 birds, divided up into relatively small groups that occupied trees, at a much greater distance from each other.

So, although Sunday’s count will not have resulted in a complete picture of the number of parakeets present in the area, we did learn something about the bird’s behavior during the harshest days of the year.  

A few winters ago the roost site was being used by a few thousand parakeets, coming from all wind directions, in particular from the south and east. In order to reach the roost site these birds had to cross a large lake (‘the IJ’) behind the Central Station. This went without a problem for a few years, but the appearance of Peregrine Falcons on the former Shell tower/Overhoeks (overlooking the IJ and in between this lake and the roost site) probably has deterred these birds from roosting in Amsterdam North. By now a number of Peregrine prey remains have been collected from the tower, including an interesting number of parakeets. At least one falcon was present on the 19^th.

A photo from January 2012; The IJ and on the right the rock that's in the way of many parakeets. The parakeets' roost site is located to the right of the tower.