(Almost) whale-watching in IJmuiden
by Arthur
Posted on Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 10:12 pm CET
Today we visited IJmuiden after seeing on waarneming.nl that for the last three days they have been spotting a Humpback Whale just 20 meters from the South Pier. We weren’t lucky today and didn’t see it, but we did see some great birds, including three new lifers (Black-legged Kittiwake, Red Knot and Pomarine Skua)!
There were lots of Black-legged Kittiwakes (above) flying around as we walked down the two mile pier into the North Sea.
At the end of the pier dozens of scopes were lined up with people eagerly waiting for the whale:
We stayed for about a half hour and then headed back again. At one point two Pomarine Jaegers (a.k.a. Pomarine Skua) came flying by chasing a gull and all telephoto lenses suddenly pointed up, clicking away.
The place was also crawling with Turnstones …
… Oystercatchers …
… and we also saw a Common Guillemot (a.k.a. Atlantic Murre):
Here’s Amy on the pier:
Walking back to the car there was an extremely cold wind that made a really cool effect by blowing sand low over the beach (and almost freezing our faces off too). Here’s a crude animation of what it was like:
So no whale unfortunately, but we still had a great day. 🙂
Today we visited IJmuiden after seeing on waarneming.nl that for the last three days they have been spotting a Humpback Whale just 20 meters from the South Pier. We weren’t lucky today and didn’t see it, but we did see some great birds, including three new lifers (Black-legged Kittiwake, Red Knot and Pomarine Skua)!
There were lots of Black-legged Kittiwakes (above) flying around as we walked down the two mile pier into the North Sea.
At the end of the pier dozens of scopes were lined up with people eagerly waiting for the whale:
We stayed for about a half hour and then headed back again. At one point two Pomarine Jaegers (a.k.a. Pomarine Skua) came flying by chasing a gull and all telephoto lenses suddenly pointed up, clicking away.
The place was also crawling with Turnstones …
… Oystercatchers …
… and we also saw a Common Guillemot (a.k.a. Atlantic Murre):
Here’s Amy on the pier:
Walking back to the car there was an extremely cold wind that made a really cool effect by blowing sand low over the beach (and almost freezing our faces off too). Here’s a crude animation of what it was like:
So no whale unfortunately, but we still had a great day. 🙂