It has been a strange autumn as far as spoonbill migration is concerned. They stayed on Schiermonnikoog for a very long time, especially at the high-water refuges near the 1st and 4th mudflats, the Willemsduin and near the Reef. Part of the spoonbills left this year very late for the Lutjewad near Hornhuizen, the place where most spoonbills from Schiermonnikoog go to molt after the breeding season. They also left for abroad much later this fall. Since a number of spoonbills were tagged, we could follow exactly what happened. Normally the spoonbills leave as early as mid-September, now some had not yet left by early October. It was then also still very warm in the Netherlands. Not only the spoonbills from Schiermonnikoog were late, actually they left late from all over the Netherlands. This could also be seen on the website of trektellen.nl where the data of migrating spoonbills could be followed every day. The peak of spoonbill migration along the coast was also later than “normal.” Of the young birds, Elymus ended up in the Seine estuary. A somewhat scary area because it is full of hunting holes. Sueda is in a marsh area in the Loire River near the town of Bouin. Krukel landed in northwest Spain on Nov. 4 and is now near Pucci who settled there as a young last year.

ZSilver is the oddest bird this fall. Silver is an adult female who wintered in Morocco near Casablanca for the past few years. So we assumed she would do that again now but she didn’t go there at all. She only left from Schiermonnikoog on October 5. She is one of many spoonbills that got caught in a storm from the south in northern Spain in mid-October. She then turned around to the Spanish north coast and stayed there until Nov. 4. Then she flew further north and is now in the Bay of Arcachon, a beautiful mudflat. We had never seen anything like it before, a spoonbill turning around halfway through its migration south and flying north again. So the storms were quite violent and tracks of other birds showed that they were struggling.

Only in late October did Rumex return to his winter destination, just southeast of Lisbon, exactly the same spot as last year. Artemis is back in southern Portugal in the same spot as last year. Braveheart, who got his transmitter this year seems to have found his spot in northwest Spain and Gerrit in central Spain. Cadiz is in the salt flats of Cadiz and Amie is 50 km from there among the bald eagles in the rice fields. Finally, there is Niroumi who, according to the readings of her color rings, should actually now be on the islet of Niroumi on the Banc d’Arguin in Mauretania, however, she only arrived halfway to Morocco. Perhaps also due to the strange weather conditions, weeks of strong winds from the south. All in all, it has become a very strange migration south for almost all spoonbills from Schiermonnikoog. https://maps.nioz.nl/spoonbills-NL/

De app: animal tracker

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator