North-east Germany (with Jochen Roeder)
26 March 2006

St Mary’s Church/Marienkirche, Stralsund - built between 1383-1473

It maybe that only the best people read this blog, or it maybe that I’ve just had a good run of luck this month, but I was fortunate to spend a “mini-break” in north-east Germany birding with Jochen Roeder - a long-time Birds Korea supporter who I’ve been emailing with for a couple of years.

Jochen lives up on the Baltic Sea coast in the town of Stralsund with his bubbly and captivating girlfriend Susanna, is a fanatical and very knowledgeable birder, and if you know a more pleasant, kinder, or considerate host I’d like to meet them (I’m shamelessly open to any offers incidentally)….

For someone who’s travelled so much I have actually spent a woefully inadequate time in western or northern Europe: a holiday in Spain with my parents, a quick trip to the Pyrenees about twenty years ago, and that’s about it. Surely, I’ve rationalised, if I’m going to get on a plane when I don’t need to (ie I’m not being paid to do so!) I may as well go birding somewhere as ‘different’ from the UK as possible? And how different could a close northern European neighbour really be…?

Well, the day I wake up anywhere near Chippenham and see and hear lines of migrating and locally-breeding Common Cranes, listen to a singing Black Redstart on my neighbour’s roof, can watch a spiralling adult White-tailed Eagle while I’m filling up the car with petrol, can see three species of woodpecker (Greater Spotted, Middle Spotted, and Lesser Spotted) and hear a fourth (Black) in one small wood, drive round a couple of fields and see 3 Rough-legged Buzzards, 4-5 Common Buzzards, 2 Red Kites, and a Hen (Northern) Harrier in almost the same binocular view, or (somewhat surreally) scan a quiet, open road leading to a grain depot and be able to see 7 species of finch (including breeding-plumaged flammea Lesser Redpoll and Twite) and 3 species of buntings at the same time - and do it all within thirty miles of my house, I’ll be able to say, “Europe - same as the UK really”. And I can tell you now, that’s never going to happen…

Common Cranes Grus grus

An interesting report coming up? Well, I hope so. Even though I was only in Germany for about 48 hours I certainly had a much better trip than I’d been expecting - and that’s no reflection of how I thought Jochen and I would get on or whether he knew the best sites to go to, but rather on my ignorance of just how good the birding in this part of Europe is. Now that I’ve been there I can truthfully say it’s excellent: in fact, it’s so good that despite some rotten weather the birding began right away (as we left Berlin’s Tegel Airport) with the first Hooded Crows I’d seen since the BOU split them from Carrion Crow in 2002, and continued throughout the drive north with small lines of Common Cranes flapping heavily across grey skies, their trumpeting contact calls just audible above the thrumming of the engine, the odd Red Kite, and skeins of geese.

By the time we reached Stralsund three hours later it was early evening, very wet, and cold - things didn’t actually bode that well, but I was here, Jochen (who embarassingly speaks English almost as well as I do, whereas I know virtually no German at all) was proving to be infectiously enthusiastic, and even through the drizzle we’d seen about fifty or sixty Common Cranes (and despite the weather they looked a lot better than the “four grey sacks in a field” I’d twitched in Devon a few months earlier!) and I was obviously in a very good birding area. Besides which, as Jochen was quick to point out, just a few days before it had been well below freezing and there’d been hardly any birds moving at all. And, he reminded me, this was supposed to be me “optimistic year”. Point taken…

After a very pleasant dinner with Susanna, we sat down to discuss plans for the birding in the morning. As I had hardly a clue at all where I was (I’m the first to admit that us Brits can be very ignorant when it comes to Europe north of the Mediterranean beaches), Jochen gave me a geography lesson with the aid of a huge and very detailed map he’d bought me.

Stralsund itself (so I learnt) was well inside the old East Germany and is in the Bundesland (or State) of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern which at over a hundred miles north of Berlin is considered quite remote. The geography of the whole area is basically dominated by a flattish plain carved out by a huge glacier studded with tiny areas of marsh (relics of the ground left sodden under huge boulders brought down by the ice) and patches of forest (including the excellent Kieshofer Moor - Jochen’s favourite local birding spot and more of which later). Though farmed most of the agriculture here is fairly low-key, and though there are hunting-platforms built in and next to every woodland these are used to shoot Roe Deer from rather than birds: in fact a few pairs of Crane remain to nest, along with White-tailed and (the rare) Lesser Spotted Eagle, and the fields commonly hold small flocks of migrating swans of all three European species (Mute, Bewick’s, and Whooper). In the eastern part of the Bundesland lies the old city of Griefswald with its famous churches, and from here there is access to the Baltic Sea and the beautiful wetlands of both the Kooser Wiesen and the Karrendorfer Wiesen (literally, the meadows of Koos and of Karrendorf), and the forest nature reserve of Eldena.

So what did I think, asked Jochen? Roll on the morning, said I!

The local forecast promised good weather by mid-morning, but we got off to an unfortunately soggy and uncomfortable start. First stop was Kieshofer Moor, a Nature Reserve created by the reversion back to flooded marshland of a conifer plantation - which that morning was being topped up by a stream of water pouring from the leaden skies. The walk out to a small wooden platform along a slippery boardwalk was pretty discouraging as there seemed to be very little calling (or very little that we could hear above the rain slapping down), but almost as soon as we reached the platform we could hear the deep, slow drum of one of my most-wanted target birds of the trip - a Black Woodpecker. If only we could get a glimpse the weather would be forgotten and the sunshine would metaphorically (if not literally) come out…

We didn’t, and it didn’t. Despite trudging round the edge of the marsh to get into the forest itself (all perfectly legal, I hasten to add) and seeing the scars left on ranks of bashed-up tree stumps that only a crow-sized woodpecker with a bill the size of a jackhammer could have caused, we just couldn’t get a sighting…We did pick up a few good birds of course (Common Cranes again, Greylag Geese, and a party of stunning white-headed “Northern” Long-tailed Tits), but no woodpeckers of any sort: still, as the ever-cheerful Jochen pointed out, we’d only been in the field an hour or two and we already we knew that there was Black Woodpecker present, and anyway we’d pass Kieshofer in the afternoon/evening on the way back to Stralsund. Indeed. It was time to get into the car, get the heaters on, and head off for the next spot - a sure-fire site for Rough-legged Buzzard apparently…

“East of Jarmshagen”

Our “next stop” was - to be honest - a field, or more accurately a couple of fields (”fields and meadows east of Jarmshagen” according to Jochen) that looked exactly like a load of other fields we’d just driven past and that caused the cynical birder inside of me to raise a rather sceptical eyebrow. There wasn’t a bird in sight.

It’s incredibly bad form of course for a guest to question a host’s birding know-how, but I was just wondering how I could suggest to Jochen that we move straight along to the next “top spot” when the rain stopped and out of nowhere (and I mean “out of nowhere” because I certainly didn’t see them arrive) the sky was suddenly dotted with three Rough-legs, a couple of Common Buzzards, a Red Kite, and - of particular interest to Jochen as it was the first he’d seen that spring - a male Hen Harrier.

Rough-legged Buzzards Buteo lagopus

 

Male Hen Harrier Circus cyaneus

It was quite incredible really. It felt like I was a participant in the performance of a master magician actually - because how else had Jochen got all those birds to appear? Jochen, I have to say, looked a little relieved. The next few hours were superb birding though as some presumably rather rain-soaked and energy deficient raptors got stuck into the local rodents.

As well as raptors the fields were pretty much full of Skylarks, Lapwings, and Golden Plovers - many of them migrants of course feeding up before following the retreating snowline north - and we also managed (after some initial confusion) to identify two Twite amongst a small flock of Linnets, which given the fact I hadn’t seen one since I was in my first pair of long trousers way-back-when was quite satisfying!

It was a remarkably good little spot, and we still hadn’t seen everything it had to offer: almost as Jochen was pointing out an isolated circle of small trees where he’d had a singing Great Grey Shrike a couple of days before we rounded a corner and sitting in pied glory on top of a nearby bush was the “butcherbird” himself. Jochen hit the brakes, I hit the automatic window switch and raised the camera - and the shrike, well the shrike just sat there. For those birders reading this more used to Loggerhead Shrikes or Brown Shrikes that may not sound like a particularly big deal, but Great Greys normally like to keep at least a field’s width between them and a suddenly braking car. It was a good moment: in fact, it meant the German Bird Gods were smiling and all was going to be well…

Great Grey Shrike Lanius excubitor

Time to move on again, and into a different habitat.

To the north of Griefswald lies some superb wetland habitats: the Kooser Wiesen and the Karrendorfer Wiesen. Flooded meadows on the shores of the Baltic Sea, these beautiful sites are as well-known in Germany as Minsmere or Cley are in the UK, regularly producing national rarities and hosting huge numbers of birds.

Karrendorfer Wiesen

The principal draw for the two “Wiesens” is that they’re both last stops for waves and waves of migrants heading out of central Europe, and as soon as we arrived we were watching birds that (in essence) had left Britain and other southern sites a month or two ago and were now flocking here before heading out over the water. Fieldfares and Redwings flew overhead, and hundreds of Linnets and Bramblings were on the move with Skylarks and Lapwings. We also had great view of what turned out to be one of my favourite birds of the trip: a startlingly bright flammea Common Redpoll which was so unexpectedly colourful that without thinking I mis-identified it as a Linnet. Take a look at the photos below and see if you agree…(and if you don’t, well, “each to their own” I say, and isn’t that what makes birding such a different experience for one person from the next?)

Common Redpoll Acanthis flammea flammea

Ever mindful that I was still prattling on about seeing more Cranes, Jochen assured me that these because these two sites were on the coast Cranes often arrived here and then had to spiral up to gain height for the sea-crossing: we’d see plenty of them in other words. He was right (of course), and as the skies cleared even further we were treated to lines and lines of Cranes flying slowly over on their way to the marshes and bogs to the north.

I really like Cranes, and I’m lucky enough to have seen quite a few species of them, from Sandhills in North America, Siberian White at Bharatpur in India, and the stunning Red-crowned and White-naped in South Korea. It’s difficult to explain quite why Cranes stir my soul like they do, but to me they seem to link the present to the past: there’s something ancient and historic about their deep, bugling calls, their craving for solitude, their cumbersome flight when their long legs and necks stick out so awkwardly. To me it’s their lack of grace in the air that make them so fascinating to watch. It’s as if they never quite evolved to travel the huge distances they do, following flyways laid down when the world was such a different place and ungainly, beautiful birds could find vast wetlands wherever they looked.Yet every year of course that’s what they do - and every year the wetlands get smaller and more disturbed. Cranes don’t deserve or belong in the world we’re creating: they’re too big, their requirements too specific. We’re pushing them out as we push into every bit of habitat they use - yet, there they are, ploughing on, filling the skies with their deep voices and their heavy bodies…

Common Cranes Grus grus

( I can almost imagine what it must have been like generations ago hearing Cranes flying high overhead, looking up trying to see where those strange and wonderful sounds were coming from. Imagine losing such remarkable birds, those calls no longer echoing from times past…it would be an awful indictment of us as a species. If you happen to feel the same way, here’s an inspirational website worth looking at - International Crane Foundation).

Another great sighting - there were lots of them, I’m just picking out my personal favourites by the way - came as Jochen and I walked towards a reed-bed so that I could try and photograph some Hooded Crows (he’s a patient guy, this Jochen I can tell you). We both heard an odd whistled call that was somewhat like a Reed Bunting but of a different tone and “feel”. Looking round expecting to see a bunting sat on one of the reeds, we both noticed a tiny ball of brown feathers bouncing towards us through the reed stems: a Eurasian Penduline Tit, another very early migrant and yet another bird I haven’t seen for years (the species is a vagrant/rare overshoot to the UK though a widespread breeding bird in and around reedbeds, ponds and ditches in much of central and eastern Europe).

Small birds in comparatively large reed beds are often a bit of a challenge to get good views of, and rather unprofessionally I took off after it like a hare (well, like a rather tired and arthritic hare laden down with a camera). Fortunately it didn’t react badly at all to me stealthily slipping and sliding down a bank towards the reeds like a car-crash on two legs to try and photograph it, and a couple of the photos turned out pretty well…We watched it for a minute or two before it launched itself into the air in an action that looked like the avian equivalent of a flea leaping off a dog’s back, hit the breeze, and disappeared over our heads with a cheery whistle. Great little bird - highly recommended…

 

Eurasian Penduline Tit Remiz pendulinus

By the time we got back to the car it was time to head onto another site to look for another of my target birds: Middle Spotted Woodpecker, a dencropos more or less confined to the European mainland across to Iran - and unsurprisingly somewhere in size between Lesser Spotted and Greater Spotted Woodpeckers, both of which also occur in this part of Germany. Jochen (of course) had sussed out the most likely place to see one, and we headed off to the nearby-ish forest nature reserve of Eldena as the clouds began to gather again and the afternoon light began to dim.

My first view of Eldena was a little discouraging (when will I learn to trust?), a lovely mature deciduous forest with towering old oaks to be sure, but also scattered through with teenagers on bicycles and dog-walkers. More like a town-park really…

In fact most of Eldena is pretty much off-limits, with most visitors crammed into one small area and advised to keep strictly to the well-marked paths: and if Jochen said it was a good site, then surely it would be? Gratifyingly, we’d walked no more than a hundred metres when he pointed high into the trees off to our left. “That call”, he said, “is a Middle-spotted”.

It took about another five minutes - with me remaining calm and relaxed, patiently scanning the snags and branches…who am I kidding, this was a species I’d never seen and I really wanted to get good views of one, I was prowling about like a detoxifying drug addict - but we were soon watching a male Middle-spotted tap-tapping away at the remnants of a broken branch. I could relax. Excellent…

Middle Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos medius: female (left) and male (right)

It soon became apparent that the area we’d stopped in was actually right on the boundary of two pairs of woodpeckers. Now, this is a species that (to quote the superb Collins Field Guide) “spends much time high up in tree crowns”, and I would highly recommend that if you want to see much more than a small woodpecker’s underparts way, way above you that you find such a meeting-place and let the woodpeckers come to you. For fifteen minutes we had wonderful views of calling Middle-spotteds racing after each other like furious wasps. If only it hadn’t been so infuriatingly dark, the photos would have been fantastic…Oh well…

With time running out, and feeling like today could be our ‘lucky woodpecker day’ after all, we took the decision to head back to Kieshofer Moor (which was on the way back anyway) to see if we could add that elusive Black Woodpecker to our day-list…

It quickly became apparent as we drove along that the light was disappearing more quickly than we’d appreciated, and by the time we arrived at Kieshofer the sky had turned a deep velvet-blue, and an evocative mist was beginning to drift up from the reeds. Needless to say the woodpecker had gone to roost, but we entered a most beautiful atmosphere that more than made up for it: in the background we could hear the calls of Cranes and Greylags floating through the trees from the adjacent grassland, the road traffic noise was subdued and barely audible, and the cool air was sinking slowly into the utterly still shallow water of the marsh. It had been a long and difficult day (lots of birds, and I’d managed to mess my back up on the flight over and had been in pain all day), but for a minute or two I just stood and let the tenseness flow away. Utterly beautiful, and a feeling that I can still recapture now, sitting here at the keyboard…

Keishofer Moor at dusk (with Jochen Roeder bottom left).

Trip List:
Great Crested Grebe Podiceps cristatus 2; Great Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis c)10; Grey Heron Ardea cinerea c)10; Mute Swan Cygnus olor 40+; Whooper Swan Cygnus cygnus 20-30; Tundra/Bewick’s Swan Cygnus columbianus 3; Tundra Bean Goose Anser fabalis rossicus 50+; Taiga Bean Goose Anser fabilis fabalis 5; Greater White-fronted Goose Anser albifrons c)30-40; Greylag Goose Anser anser 40+; Eurasian Wigeon Anas penelope 3-4; Common Teal Anas crecca 6; Mallard Anas platyrhynchos 50+; Red-crested Pochard Netta rufina 1; Common Pochard Aythya ferina 20+; Tufted Duck Aythya fuligula c)100; Greater Scaup Aythya marila 20-30; Long-tailed Duck Clangula hyemalis 5; Common Merganser Mergus merganser c)20; Red Kite Milvus milvus 6-7; Black Kite Milvus migrans 1; White-tailed Sea Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla 1,4,2; Western Marsh Harrier Circus aeruginosus 2; Hen/Northern Harrier Circus cyaneus 2; Northern Goshawk Accipiter gentilis 1; Eurasian Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus 2; Common Buzzard Buteo buteo 40+; Rough-legged Buzzard Buteo lagopus 4; Common Kestrel Falco tinnunculus 4; Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus 1; Common Crane Grus grus 400+; Common Coot Fulica atra c)10; Northern Lapwing Vanellus vanellus 1000+; Eurasian Golden Plover Pluvialis apricaria 800-900; Ringed Plover Charadrius hiaticula 8; Eurasian Woodcock Scolopax rusticola 4; Common Snipe Gallinago gallinago 3-4; Common Redshank Tringa totanus 2; Dunlin Calidris alpina 3; Common Gull Larus canus c)10; Lesser Black-backed Gull Larus fuscus intermedius 1; Black-headed Gull Larus ridibundus 400+ ; Stock Dove Columba oenas c)10; Wood Pigeon Columba palumbus 200+; Lesser Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos minor 3 (+ 2 heard); Middle Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos medius 3, 1; Great Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos major 4-5; (Black Woodpecker Dryocopus martius 1heard;) Crested Lark Galerida cristata 3; Wood Lark Lullula arborea 3; Sky Lark Alauda arvensis 400+; Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica 1; White Wagtail Motacilla alba alba 10+; Meadow Pipit Anthus pratensis c)10 ; Goldcrest Regulus regulus 2+; Winter Wren Troglodytes troglodytes 5-6; Dunnock Prunella modularis 2; Common Blackbird Turdus merula 10+; Fieldfare Turdus pilaris 30-40; Redwing Turdus iliacus c)30; Mistle Thrush Turdus viscivorus 1; Song Thrush Turdus philomelos 3-4; Common Chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita 1; Black Redstart Phoenicurus ochruros 1; European Stonechat Saxicola rubicola 1; Long-tailed Tit Aegithalos caudatus 8; Marsh Tit Poecile palustris 3-4; Crested Tit Parus cristatus 2; Great Tit Parus major 20+; Blue Tit Parus caeruleus 10+; Eurasian Nuthatch Sitta europaea 4-5; Eurasian Treecreeper Certhia familiaris 2+; Short-toed Treecreeper Certhia brachydactyla 1 (+3-4 heard); Eurasian Penduline-tit Remiz pendulinus 1;
Great Grey Shrike Lanius excubitor 3; Eurasian Jay Garrulus glandarius 2; Eurasian Magpie Pica pica c)10; Eurasian Jackdaw Corvus monedula 10+; Rook Corvus frugilegus 100+; Hooded Crow Corvus cornix 20-30; Common Raven Corvus corax c)10; Common Starling Sturnus vulgaris 2-3000; House Sparrow Passer domesticus 30+; Eurasian Tree Sparrow Passer montanus 1; Common Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs 500+; Brambling Fringilla montifringilla 100+; Common Crossbill Loxia curvirostra 2-3; European Greenfinch Carduelis chloris 1; Common Redpoll Acanthis flammea flammea 5-6; Eurasian Siskin Carduelis spinus c)10; European Goldfinch Carduelis carduelis 3; Twite Acanthis flavirostris 2, 6; Common Linnet Acanthis cannabina 20+; European Serin Serinus serinus 1; Common Bullfinch Pyrrhula pyrrhula 3; Hawfinch Coccothraustes coccothraustes 4; Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella 30-40; Reed Bunting Emberiza schoeniclus 50+; Corn Bunting Emberiza calandra 10+

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores