Vögel von Deutschland

Even starlings seem exotic in a foreign land.

 Another distracted post about Germany: this time I intend to focus on birds. We'll see how that goes. The older I get (and I feel I'm getting older by the minute which, of course, is the case), the hazier my memory becomes. That's not so unusual, but it's particularly inconvenient when my camera stops working and I have to try to remember what birds I've seen actually looked like. Not having a proper guidebook with us wasn't so helpful either. We kept meaning to stop by a bookstore to get one (as we have done in France and The Netherlands), but that didn't so much happen this time around.

 But enough with the excuses! What of the birds?

 One of the highlights was assuredly the very obliging black woodpecker, a video of which (taken by Scott on his aged iPhone), I posted a few days ago.

The cinematographer in action

 The woodpecker was in Great Garden Park (or Großer Garten if you want to practice your German) which is--I think--sort of in the heart of Dresden, though I have to admit I never developed any sense of how the city was actually laid out. It's sort of small, maybe, is Dresden; I know we ended up outside the city limits in one direction while out on a walk and in another direction when we went for a bike ride. But this park is definitely quite large. And, for the most part, well manicured. It contains an old palace, too; Scott theorized it was where August the Strong housed visitors he didn't so much want to see, though googling suggests otherwise. We heard a great many birds in the park--with Merlin id'ing all sorts of them, but the woodpecker was, I think, the only one we saw clearly enough.

Merlin ID list for video, above

 We also saw several times, but failed to get any sort of photographic evidence for, a number of what Merlin declared to be great spotted woodpeckers. Having checked out (from SPL, after we were home again) a bird ID book for Europe, Birds of Europe, I now know that there is also a mid-sized spotted woodpecker and possibly a small one as well, and I certainly can't say for sure which we saw. But I'm trusting Merlin to have been able to distinguish between their calls so I'm claiming to have seen the GREAT one. (Though I do remember thinking one of them was distinctly smaller than the others . . . )

 The Eurasian blackbird was the most obliging of birds; we saw him (or her) quite clearly on several occasions, but failed to get any proper photos. Also seen more than once was the European robin, also a mighty-fine bird. Again with no photos. And ditto the great tit, which one imagines must be related to our chickadees.

 I was pretty excited when we read that a bird we'd seen on our bike ride along the Elba was a "goosander," but now I find that that's just the local name for what I originally thought it was, a common merganser. Still, it's one of the rare birds I photographed with my real camera before it gave up the ghost, so I'm still taken with it:

"Goosander" is a better name than "common" merganser anyway.

 Also seen on that bike ride when my camera had not yet died, a whole mess of greylag geese, some of them banded:

A sampling of greylags, enjoying a Saturday outing on the Elba

 One of my favorite bird experiences of the trip was all the house martins hanging out by the Augustus Bridge. We encountered these our first full day in Dresden and I found them absolutely mesmerizing.

Trust me when I say this does not at all capture the experience

It was in Frankfurt that we saw the Egyptian geese hanging out on a bit of public grass:

A little alarming, really

 A park in Berlin--the Tiergarten, maybe--turned out to be the best spot for birds--and of course I had neither binoculars (stowed in our luggage in a locker at the Berlin train station) nor camera (ditto stowage and not working anyway). We were just taking a shortcut through the park to get from the Brandenburg Gate to the art museum with the Vermeers, you see. But then we encountered a charming hooded crow family.

Crowlet behavior is a universal constant

 There was quite a bit of activity on the other side of the path too. My attention was first drawn to what we're thinking was a common chaffinch fledge, harassing its parent, and then a Eurasian nuthatch put in an appearance, followed by what we're saying was yet another (great) spotted woodpecker. And I even sort of got some photos (Note that I'm not saying any of them are good photos!):

Young common chaffinch who first drew my attention

Adult male common chaffinch pretending not to notice its offspring

Trust me, it's a Eurasian nuthatch

 Also seen hither and yon, a grey heron, many magpies, mallards, probably common chiffchaffs, and a pigeon of some sort that seemed so common I didn't even bother taking a photo, and now--predictably--I can't find anything that's a match. There were also a number of what I assumed were house sparrows and only now wonder if perhaps they were something marginally more exotic--Italian sparrows (a cross between house and Spanish). Alas, there's no way of knowing now. We also heard what I'm assuming was a cuckoo about a million times, but never got any sort of look at anything that might have been making the noise, sadly.

 I hope to have more scintillating--or at least in-focus--photos for a future post. Stay tuned!