Author Archives: Andrew Dressel

Here’s another singer from my trip to the wooded cemetery on the TU Delft campus. He’s a male Eurasian blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla), an Old World Warbler, and one of the seven species in the genus Sylvia, which are called typical warblers, for reasons that I am sure made perfect sense at the time. Boy, could heContinue reading “Another warbler in the woods…”

After taking pictures in the countryside and writing to you about it on Saturday, I went on a big bike ride to run some errands, so Sunday morning I needed a break from my bike saddle. Luckily, I’ve gradually noticed a big chunk of forest right in the northwest corner of the TU Delft campus,Continue reading “Parallel Worlds…”

Oof! Sorry about my goof-up in yesterday’s report. The WordPress editor seems to struggle a bit with my switch from merely inserting images directly to imbedding image URLs from my Flickr page. I thought I had deleted the picture of the little bird with the black cap and yellow belly, to save it for today,Continue reading “Cleanup in Aisle Three…”

Well, I’ve been here for over a month, and I now have a local bank account into which I got paid and from which I paid my rent for July, so it looks like they’re going to let me stay a while. That’s cool ’cause now that I’ve had a taste, I’d like to seeContinue reading “A Satisfactory South Holland Saturday”

It did rain last night, as forecast, but the skies were mostly clear by morning, so out I went again. This time a female tufted duck was the first to greet me with a photo-op. I do see them around, from time to time, but I haven’t taken a picture of one since staying byContinue reading “Fun with Names!”

The clouds were pretty low and grey this morning but at least they weren’t leaking, so I rode out to the countryside to see what I could see, and I was soon greeted by this young great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) rustling up some breakfast in a birch tree that has seen better days. WithContinue reading “Weekend Waders”

Sorry about the pause, but I’ve moved into a new place again, I hope for the last time on this trip, and I don’t have to commute across the open fields between Rotterdam and Delft any more. Instead, I’ve now gotta decide to ride out there on purpose, ideally before work, and this was theContinue reading “Back in action after a brief Dutch Delay”

You may have noticed that I’ve been struggling a bit with little birds here. I think I’ve only shown you four so far, the chiffchaff, the sedge warbler, the reed bunting, and yesterday’s chaffinch. The first excuse that pops into my head is that they are less flashy than the ones back home. Think ofContinue reading “Delightful Dutch Weekend Overflow.”

It was another beautiful morning in South Holland, so I hopped on my bike and headed into the countryside again. My first new find is this striking common chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) finally posing perfectly after it made me chase it from perch to perch for a while. I read that chaffinch is “literally “chaff-finch,” so calledContinue reading “Another Dutch Day of Sunshine”

The planets aligned, and it was a nice sunny morning, for a change, and I had nothing else I had to do since the building in which I work is locked for the whole weekend, by policy, and I hear people need special permission to gain access. I could go to the library instead, butContinue reading “More Dutch Details…”