April 2026

 Dear all, here I am at last; it is already May and May is almost over. But let me just stick to April. April is one of my favorite months, bird-wise. Migratory birds pass through and head north, and "our" birds start singing and courting. The first rains start to fall, and everything turns green and lush again. Although that didn't really happen in April, which was a shame. I was still irrigating during the first weeks of April. Different weather has to do with "El Niño," and because we are dealing with climate change, "El Niño" is stronger. And so, a very different weather picture than we are used to.

                       We decided to go to the Netherlands earlier than usual, for 2 weeks.

I actually liked the idea of ​​going earlier, because the birds in the Netherlands are singing and active then too. And there is a good chance I will see some migratory birds passing through. And it had been a while since that happened. We stayed in a nice old farmworker's cottage from 1859; it is located 2 minutes from the entrance to the Kennemer Dunes National Park. 

                                          And we even had bicycles. So we did that regularly. 

A beautiful dune area on the North Sea

I grew up by the dunes, so for me it was wonderful to hear and see all those birds again. What was really weird, though, was that I was a bit confused about the names of the birds during the first week. I recognized them, recognized the song and calls... but because I naturally make my lists in English for E-bird, I had forgotten some names of "my" Dutch birds. That was SO weird. But anyway, by the last week I had it all back in my head. And well here some pictures of my Dutch cuties!

long-tailed Tit   Staartmees

northern Wheatear   Tapuit

the first Cuckoo   Koekoek

Bluethroat  Blauwborst

Redstart   gekraagde Roodstaart

Dunnock    Heggenmus

                                         cute eurasian blue Tit  with nest material  Pimpelmees

My goal for the dune birds was to see one new bird....and that was the Black-necked Grebe (geoorde Fuut) ; strangely enough, I had never seen one before, and yes, I did see one. 

                                            Had to zoom in, so not the best pictures...

When I was visiting my friend, who lives in the far north of the Netherlands, we did see a group of Redwings (Koperwiek)... that was really a while ago, those were migrating to Scandinavia, Iceland, Siberia, Finland. Such a beautiful bird.

We also went to our former village in the middle of the country on the river Waal. A friend of ours who lives in our old house had told us that a White-tailed Eagle (Visarend) was nesting there. We are going to see these Eagles more and more in the Netherlands; they are doing well. And I had seen them before, but not on a nest.

                                                                 That was special!

The weeks  did go fast and before we knew  we were home in Boquete, Panama. And that was wonderful again. Back to work immediately, because we had guests right away. But anyway, that helps to get over the jet lag... and the day after arrival I was already birdwatching in the Cloud Forest, which was lovely again too.

And so May had already begun... this week I will make the story of the month May...

Greetings from Terry