Monday 20 August 2007

Bad timing...

Very bad timing, indeed.

I will be going back to the German Baltic Sea coast, namely the area around the cities of Stralsund and Greifswald, in about 3 weeks.

It's a good time to return there with the onset of the fall migration of geese and cranes. August however, which is now, is a truly miraculous month there - just like about everywhere else in the northern hemisphere - for watching the migration of shorebirds (or waders, if you prefer, a subject on which I am rather indifferent, although the German expression translates to "waders" as well).

Anyway, today I received an email through our local Baltic Coast birders forum about a Grey-tailed Tattler that was observed in my Baltic home patch north of Greifswald, the salt marshes of Karrendorf.

Well, not only would this have been a lifer for me.
It is also a first for Germany, and that doesn't happen all that often anymore.
And it is a species so rare even in a European context that I got an email from a friend from the UK inquiring about it as it was on their pagers as well.


Aaaand ... it is grey and cold outside, raining rats and hogs and I am stuck in front of my computer covered up to my neck in work.


You just have to agree: something here didn't work out the way it should have, something along the string of time went awfully wrong!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like my luck!

Patrick B. said...

I can't wait to see what shows up in Michigan when you go back to Germany! :)

Jochen said...

Thanks, Patrick, thanks very much, me neither...

Anonymous said...

Just so long as there are some cool birds around when I visit you in Germany...

Jochen said...

Corey, don't worry, there'll be plenty of good birds around.
Besides, the Tattler turned out to be nothing but an unusually plumaged Knot ...
But right now there is a claim of an American Golden Plover from the same area, observed by a German birder who spent 13 years in Oregon and knows all three species of Golden Plovers very well, so this sounds very interesting to say the least.