Bird watching on Snapshot

Friday 03 August 2018

Spotting wildlife at Snapshot Hoge Veluwe is fun for many of us. The majority of images are of large herbivores like red deer and wild boar. Of course we focus on these animals since most of our research questions revolve around them. But we also spot other animals, like birds for example. In this blog we want to give these animals some attention as well.

We do not see them too often but sometimes they pop up. This is because most birds spent most of their time in the air and in trees. Of course they are a lot smaller too so the chances of a bird triggering the camera is smaller. Especially when they fly by. Nevertheless we spot birds every now and then. And not just any birds. Like the ring ouzel (both male and female) were spotted recently. De ring ouzel is a rare guest passing through The Netherlands on its migration. The bird looks similar to a blackbird but is easy to distinguish thanks to the white crescent on its breast. Apart from the ring ouzel we have seen several great tits but also a raven, Eurasian skylarks, a Eurasian blue tit, Egyptian geese, mistle thrushes, a hawk and a buzzard. There are even rumours that a Eurasian woodcock has been spotted. This is a rare wader that lives in the forest. Sadly the images were not shared on the forum thus we cannot confirm this. But we can ascertain that with some luck you will be able to spot some interesting birds on Snapshot Hoge Veluwe. A special treat for the enthusiastic birders among us.

Because birds are not our main interest when it comes to our research, because recognizing birds is relatively difficult and because our field guide would be huge when we have to include all the possible birds, we do not ask to identify the birds during classifications. But we do find it interesting to see what bird species we catch in front of our cameras. We kindly ask you to share images on the forum when you think you have spotted an interesting bird. The images are not always that clear but often we can identify it with the help of other volunteers.